Network & Support

The Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance was initially formed under “emergency” conditions of the early COVID-19 pandemic in response to multiple early reports of COVID patients with an inexplicably high need for prolonged mechanical ventilation and an excessive mortality associated with the prevailing “supportive care only” recommendations disseminated by the majority of national and international health care organizations. As a group of highly published leaders in critical care with expertise in therapies directed at severe infections, in particular “HAT” therapy first developed by Dr. Paul Marik for the treatment of bacterial sepsis, and along with published high patient survival rates from our centers, we were contacted by equally concerned and motivated colleagues from other specialties.

New York City Internal medicine specialist Dr. Keith Berkowitz, Dr. Howard Kornfeld of San Francisco, who is board certified in emergency medicine, and pulmonologist Dr. Fred Wagshul in Ohio each sought out Dr. Marik in the hopes of developing a similarly effective treatment strategy for COVID-19. Dr. Marik quickly convened the other members and we collaboratively and intensively reviewed the emerging clinical, radiographic, and pathological reports of COVID-19 disease, and held multiple discussions with many front-line clinical ICU experts from the initial outbreak areas in China, Italy, and New York. Based on the shared early impressions of “what was working and what wasn’t working” from these colleagues, along with the increasing publications plus our rapidly accumulating personal clinical experiences and investigations into the pathophysiology of COVID-19 patients, we formulated the MATH+  treatment protocol in March 2020.