Arguable. Needing ventilation (i.e developing ARF/ARDS) is not necessarily the cause of mortality rather suggestive of decompensated sepsis. From the limited l

Arguable. Needing ventilation (i.e developing ARF/ARDS) is not necessarily the cause of mortality rather suggestive of decompensated sepsis. From the limited literature available the causes of death are multi organ failure secondary to sepsis or heart failure. Ventilating is essentially just a form of life support and not a treatment itself. Certainly not having the resources or equipment to ventilate someone in respiratory failure would cause mortality but the mere act of being able to ventilate someone does not mean you are going to prevent death, only if the goal is to buy time for other things / the immune system to start working. The timing of ventilation / early ventilation is studied in other disease processes (probably most relevant is pneumonia) with mixed evidence, and we have therapeutics that work for pneumonia.