PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Epelbaum, Oleg
AU  - Galperin, Irene
TI  - In defence of extrapolation but not improvisation in SARS-CoV-2 lung disease
AID  - 10.1183/20734735.0113-2020
DP  - 2020 Jun 01
TA  - Breathe
PG  - 200113
VI  - 16
IP  - 2
4099  - http://breathe.ersjournals.com/content/16/2/200113.short
4100  - http://breathe.ersjournals.com/content/16/2/200113.full
SO  - Breathe2020 Jun 01; 16
AB  - Recently, the struggle against COVID-19 by respiratory and intensive care clinicians worldwide was punctuated by the sound of calls from a number of influential publications for an end to, as it were, improvisation and a return to principles of evidence-based medicine. The message was that management of SARS-CoV-2 lung disease needed to be guided strictly according to established dogma in acute respiratory distress syndrome unless supplanted by clinical trials specific to COVID-19. This position is predicated on the assumptions that knowledge about acute respiratory distress syndrome, and only about that entity, is directly translatable to SARS-CoV-2 lung disease, and that clinical trials enrolling COVID-19 patients will be completed in a sufficiently timely and rigorous fashion to influence empirical practice during the current pandemic. Clearly, there is room for an alternative perspective. In this Viewpoint, we aim to articulate a contrary point of view by resorting to arguments that are likely to resonate with frontline clinicians battling COVID-19.It is debatable whether existing evidence-based principles for the management of acute respiratory distress syndrome are sufficiently applicable to #SARSCoV2 lung disease to serve as strict dogma for the approach to this novel clinical entity https://bit.ly/2XjYPQs