-
- N Nelson and B Janerot-Sjöberg.
- Department of Health and Environment, Division of Pediatrics, Faculty of Health Sciences, University Hospital, Linköping, Sweden. nina.nelson@lio.se
- Crit Care. 2001 Jan 1; 5 (1): 41-5.
BackgroundThe haemodynamic as well as the ventilatory consequences of mechanical ventilation can be harmful in critically ill neonates. Newly developed ventilatory lung protective strategies are not always available immediately and in an acute situation the haemodynamic changes caused by mechanical ventilation can affect the oxygen delivery considerably. We report the case of a male neonate who was treated with conventional pressure-controlled mechanical ventilation because of respiratory distress and progressive respiratory acidosis resulting from meconium aspiration. Because of poor arterial oxygenation despite 100% inspired oxygen and increased ventilator settings, echocardiography was performed to exclude central haemodynamic reasons for low oxygen delivery.MethodDoppler echocardiography was used for the measurement of stroke volume and cardiac output. Pulse oximetry and aortic blood pressure were monitored continuously.ResultsEchocardiography revealed no cardiac malformations or signs of persistent fetal circulation. When inspiratory pressures and duration were increased, beat-to-beat variation in stroke volume preceded decay in cardiac output. Stroke volume variations and oxygen saturation values guided ventilator settings until extracorporal membrane oxygenation could be arranged for. After recovery and discharge 4 weeks later the boy is progressing normally.ConclusionBecause oxygen delivery is dependent on both blood flow and arterial oxygen content, measurement of cardiac output as well as left heart oxygen saturation is a useful guide to optimizing oxygen delivery. This case report demonstrates how Doppler echocardiographic monitoring of beat-to-beat changes in stroke volume can be used to detect early negative haemodynamic effects of increased mechanical ventilation settings before cardiac output is affected.
Notes
Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?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.
.