Abstract

High Flow Nasal Cannula (HFNC) is a non-invasive oxygen therapy system it consists in the administration of gas flows, mixture of air and oxygen (O2 ), which exceed the patient’s ventilatory demands and also it is a friendly system, which allows its use outside of critical units. Objective: To collect and analyse the available literature in relation to the definition and clinical parameters that predict the failure of HFNC therapy, in hospitalized pediatric patients inside and outside the ICU, in order to provide knowledge to clinicians to optimize the management of this device, facilitate the administration of the resources and finally, improve the pediatric patients outcomes by identifying the clinical predictors of HFNC failure. Conclusion: There is no consensus regarding the definition of failure of HFNC, which makes it difficult to interpretate the results of the studies and, therefore, its translation into clinical practice. On the other hand, although predictive factors of failure have been identified, in most studies, are restricted to demographic characteristics, comorbidities, severity indexes and/or require the taking of arterial blood tests, therefore their applicability outside of the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU), is limited. Regarding the identification of clinical parameters, some of the studies mentioned their correlation with failure, but during the administration of the therapy and not previously. This situation makes the early characterization of patients who require HFNC more difficult, and therefore, the individualized decisions that could eventually improve economical and clinical outcomes of our pediatric patients.