Another article highlighting the importance of an ARDS...

Another article highlighting the importance of an ARDS resolution where Mesoblast gets mentioned:

https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/comment/ards-treatment-covid-19/

"Treatment for acute respiratory distress syndrome for the severely affected portion of the Covid-19 patients will play an important role in decreasing the mortality of the disease. About one in six Covid-19 patients have difficulty breathing, and about 40% of those with difficulty breathing develop ARDS. Of ARDS patients, who are treated with mechanical ventilation, there is a 20–50% survival rate. The estimated mortality rate is 80% for moderate to severe Covid-19-related ARDS".

Curious where they get their 20-50% survival rate on mechanical intervention. Other cohort studies have suggested much higher. Perhaps they are quoting pre-COVID-19 figures The medical journal of Australia certainly has higher on COVID-19:

https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2020/covid-19-ards-clinical-features-and-differences-usual-pre-covid-ards

"COVID-19 ARDS appears to have worse outcomes than ARDS from other causes. The ICU and hospital mortality from typical ARDS are 35.3% (95% CI, 33.3%-37.2%) and 40.0% (95% CI, 38.1%-42.1%), respectively. For COVID-19 ARDS mortality ranged between 26% to 61.5% if ever admitted into a critical care setting, and in patients who received mechanical ventilation, the mortality can range between 65.7% to 94%. Risk factors for poor outcomes include older age, presence of co-morbidities such as hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes mellitus, lower lymphocyte counts, kidney injury and raised D-dimer. Death from COVID-19 ARDS is due to respiratory failure (53%), respiratory failure combined with cardiac failure (33%), myocardial damage and circulatory failure (7%), or death from an unknown cause.

These are important figures to have in mind for our study is the 66-94% mortality from mechanical intervention. The journal clearly have a wide range because of the many different reported outcomes from different studies in China, UK, US, etc. One of the positive things about MSB's trials is also to have some clear and reliable figures on ARDS effects from the placebo group for comparison. I still feel dreadfully sorry for those poor souls who have to die almost to get these statistics better because of crappy and biased stats to date.