• Dale M Needham, Elizabeth Colantuoni, Pedro A Mendez-Tellez, Victor D Dinglas, Jonathan E Sevransky, Cheryl R Dennison Himmelfarb, Sanjay V Desai, Carl Shanholtz, Roy G Brower, and Peter J Pronovost.
• Outcomes After Critical Illness and Surgery Group, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA. Dale.Needham@jhmi.edu
• BMJ. 2012 Jan 1;344:e2124.

ObjectiveTo evaluate the association of volume limited and pressure limited (lung protective) mechanical ventilation with two year survival in patients with acute lung injury.DesignProspective cohort study.Setting13 intensive care units at four hospitals in Baltimore, Maryland, USA.Participants485 consecutive mechanically ventilated patients with acute lung injury.Main Outcome MeasureTwo year survival after onset of acute lung injury.Results485 patients contributed data for 6240 eligible ventilator settings, as measured twice daily (median of eight eligible ventilator settings per patient; 41% of which adhered to lung protective ventilation). Of these patients, 311 (64%) died within two years. After adjusting for the total duration of ventilation and other relevant covariates, each additional ventilator setting adherent to lung protective ventilation was associated with a 3% decrease in the risk of mortality over two years (hazard ratio 0.97, 95% confidence interval 0.95 to 0.99, P=0.002). Compared with no adherence, the estimated absolute risk reduction in two year mortality for a prototypical patient with 50% adherence to lung protective ventilation was 4.0% (0.8% to 7.2%, P=0.012) and with 100% adherence was 7.8% (1.6% to 14.0%, P=0.011).ConclusionsLung protective mechanical ventilation was associated with a substantial long term survival benefit for patients with acute lung injury. Greater use of lung protective ventilation in routine clinical practice could reduce long term mortality in patients with acute lung injury.Trial RegistrationClinicaltrials.gov NCT00300248.

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