The ever-recurring decision for every clinician is to act or not to act and when to act. The balance of benefit or harm of an intervention and the optimal timing of treatment is not always clear.

Intervening or not and the timing are different questions but related especially in studies of the latter.

In intensive care, the issue of timing of life-sustaining treatments such as renal replacement therapy (RRT) and vasopressors in sepsis have been investigated.

There is also an ongoing debate regarding ventilation strategy, as early tracheal intubation exposes patients to procedural complications, ventilator-induced lung injury, or ventilator-acquired pneumonia, on the other hand, delayed intubation exposes them to self-induced lung injury or the emergency procedure in the context of more respiratory or hemodynamic instability that is associated with major adverse peri-intubation events can lead to more complications.

The timing of intubation has been studied in the general ICU population and COVID-19 patients in observational studies and varies widely across countries and according to the physician in charge.

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