Introduction: Cancer patients had experienced different complications during therapy sessions, and dyspnea is one of the most common clinical symptoms that reported. In another hand, some of the patients suffer to acute respiratory failure (ARF) which remains a major cause of ICU admission.
High-Flow Nasal Cannula (HFNC) oxygen therapy is frequently applied to relieve dyspnea and acute respiratory failure (ARF) in patients with cancer.
Methods: A review was acquired by searching the databases of Springer, PubMed, Nature and ResearchGate.
Results: Compare to other form of oxygen therapy like conventional oxygen therapy (COT) and noninvasive ventilation (NIV), HFNC has been beneficial to cure dyspnea with enhancing nasopharyngeal washout, reducing nasopharyngeal inspiratory resistance, augmenting positive end-expiratory pressure, and stimulating the trigeminal and glossopharyngeal nerves, which all can modulate central respiratory drive. Additionally, HFNC is useful for cancer patients with acute respiratory failure (ARF) to avoid mechanical ventilation (MV) and provides safe and comfortable treatment for cancer patients.
Conclusion: This review sheds light on HFNC as one of the most important oxygen therapy methods which enhance clinically relevant outcomes in both hypoxemic and non-hypoxemic patients and improve quality of their lives.