LAUSR

Introduction, historical background Twenty years ago we designed a trial, the first patients were included in May 1998, and in 2001 we published in the New England Journal of Medicine the study entitled ‘Noninvasive ventilation in immunosuppressed patients with pulmonary infiltrates, fever, and acute respiratory failure’ [1]. Pulmonary complications were an important cause of illness in immunocompromised patients and invasive mechanical ventilation (MV) was associated with a significant risk of death [2, 3]. Thus, avoiding intubation should be an important objective in the management of hypoxemic acute respiratory failure (ARF) in immunosuppressed patients. There were only limited data on the efficacy of NIV in high-risk immunocompromized patients [4, 5].