Is ARDS a Preventable Disease? From Iatrogenic Injury to Phenotype-Targeted Protection
Subtitle: To what extent do our ICU practices actually prevent lung injury — and why does pharmacological prevention still disappoint? The clinical question How many of our patients who develop acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) are victims of our own mistakes? We have fundamentally transformed our ventilation, transfusion and fluid management practices — but have these efforts translated into a tangible reduction in ARDS? And why do pharmacological prevention trials consistently fail? The review in brief In this narrative review published in Intensive Care Medicine on 8 June 2026, Yadav and colleagues ask, in the 60th year since ARDS was first described, whether the disease can be prevented. 1 Written by three experienced researchers from Mayo Clinic and the University of Minnesota, the paper synthesises clinical trials, population-based epidemiological data, implementation research and biological subphenotyping studies through the framework of the “multiple hit hypothe...
