• Arch. Dis. Child. Fetal Neonatal Ed. · Jul 2018

    Frequency, duration and cause of ventilator alarms on a neonatal intensive care unit.

    • Gusztav Belteki and Colin J Morley.
    • Neonatal Services, The Rosie Hospital, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Cambridge, UK.
    • Arch. Dis. Child. Fetal Neonatal Ed. 2018 Jul 1; 103 (4): F307-F311.

    ObjectiveTo investigate the frequency and cause of neonatal ventilator alarms. Neonatal ventilators frequently alarm and also disturb babies, parents and nurses. If frequent they may cause alarm fatigue and be ignored. The number, frequency and details of neonatal ventilator alarms are unreported.MethodsWe developed programs for retrieving and analysing ventilator data each second on alarms and ventilation parameters from 46 babies ventilated with Dräger Babylog VN500 ventilators using various modes.ResultsA mean of 60 hours was recorded per baby. Over 116 days, 27 751 alarms occurred. On average, that was 603 per baby and 10 per hour. Median (IQR) alarm duration was 10 (4-21) s. Type, frequency and duration varied between infants. Some babies had >10% of their time with alarms. Eight alarm types caused ~99% of all alarms. Three alarms, 'MV high limit' and 'respiratory rate >high limit', caused 46.6%, often due to inappropriate settings. 49.9% were due to a low expired tidal volume during volume guarantee ventilation, often due to the maximum pressure being set too low. 26 106 (94.1%) of all alarms lasted <1 min. However, 86 alarms lasted >10 min and 16 alarms >1 hour. Similar alarms were frequently clustered, sometimes >100/hour.ConclusionsFrequent ventilator alarms are caused by physiological variability in the respiratory rate or minute volume, inappropriate alarm limits or too low maximum peak inflating pressure during volume-targeted ventilation. While most alarms were very short, sometimes alarms were ignored by neonatal intensive care unit staff for long periods.© Article author(s) (or their employer(s) unless otherwise stated in the text of the article) 2018. All rights reserved. No commercial use is permitted unless otherwise expressly granted.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…