• Gerhard K Wolf and John H Arnold.
• Division of Critical Care Medicine, Department of Anesthesia, Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
• Crit. Care Med. 2005 Mar 1; 33 (3 Suppl): S163-9.

ObjectiveRespiratory inductance plethysmography (RIP) and electrical impedance tomography (EIT) are two monitoring techniques that have been used to assess lung volume noninvasively.MethodsRIP uses two elastic bands around the chest and abdomen to assess global changes in lung volume. In animal models, RIP has been shown to detect changes in lung mechanics during high-frequency oscillatory ventilation and has the potential to quantify lung volumes noninvasively. EIT measures regional impedance changes with 16 electrodes around the patient's chest, each of them injecting and receiving small currents. Impedance changes have been correlated with volume changes in animal models and in humans. In a recent animal model, EIT was shown to be capable of tracking lung volume changes during high-frequency oscillatory ventilation.ConclusionThe promise of monitoring techniques such as RIP and EIT is that they will guide lung protective ventilation strategies and allow the clinician to optimize lung recruitment, maintain an open lung, and limit overdistension. EIT is the only bedside method that allows repeated, noninvasive measurements of regional lung volumes. In the future, it will be important to standardize the definitions of alveolar recruitment and ultimately demonstrate the superiority of EIT-guided ventilator management in providing lung protective ventilation.

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