Early prone positioning reduces mortality of severe ARDS patients

Prone positioning has proved to be effective to improve oxygenation by promoting alveolar recruitment and to reduce ventilation- induced lung injury by homogenizing the distribution of stress and strain within the lungs.
Despite clear physiological benefits, most of the previous trials failed to prove that maintaining the acute lung injury (ALI) and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) patient in prone position during mechanical ventilation provides a significant improvement in mortality compared to the standard semi-recumbent position.
However some of the post-hoc and meta-analysis showed that the most hypoxemic ARDS patients may benefit from this treatment.
In their recently published paper