Resp Care
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Many technologic and management strategies related to mechanical ventilation have been introduced in recent years. Strategies that avoid intubation and get patients extubated sooner decrease costs related to mechanical ventilation. ⋯ There is an increasing list of examples in which short-term physiologic outcomes such as improvements in blood gas values are not related to patient-important outcomes such as survival. When new mechanical ventilation technology and strategies are introduced, a question we need to ask ourselves is whether these are solutions for problems or whether these are simply solutions in search of problems.
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The clinical utility of measures of dyspnea has been debated in the health care community. Although breathlessness can be evaluated with various instruments, the most effective dyspnea measurement tool for patients with chronic lung disease or for measuring treatment effectiveness remains uncertain. Understanding the evidence for the validity and reliability of these instruments may provide a basis for appropriate clinical application. ⋯ The dyspnea measurement instruments we studied meet important standards of validity and reliability. Discriminative measures have limited clinical utility and, when used for populations or conditions for which they are not designed or validated, the data collected may not be clinically relevant. Evaluative measures have greater clinical utility and can be applied for outcome purposes. Measures should be applied to the populations and conditions for which they were designed. The relationship between clinical therapies and the measurement of dyspnea as an outcome can develop as respiratory therapists become more comfortable with implementing dyspnea measurement instruments and use the data to improve patient treatment. Dyspnea evaluation should be considered for all clinical practice guidelines and care pathways.
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Comparative Study
Relationship of neonatal endotracheal tube size and airway resistance.
Infants receiving mechanical ventilation require narrow-lumen, small-diameter endotracheal tubes. ⋯ The higher resistance of the 2.5 mm tube may be detrimental to extremely low birthweight infants kept on mechanical support merely "to grow." The higher resistance may increase the work of breathing and thus increase caloric expenditure and impede growth.
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Venoarterial extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (VA ECMO) has become a valuable technique in the critical care of children with congenital heart disease who require mechanical cardiorespiratory support. The use of VA ECMO in cardiac patients has expanded from an extension of intraoperative cardiopulmonary bypass and now includes rescue therapy during cardiopulmonary resuscitation, temporary circulatory support for reversible heart failure, and bridge support preceding heart or heart/lung transplantation. In the majority of clinical applications VA ECMO is used in reaction to impending or ongoing cardiorespiratory failure and not in anticipation of an induced change in clinical status. ⋯ Following an uncomplicated ECMO course she was decannulated in the cardiac intensive care unit and subsequently discharged home in stable condition. The case illustrates the proactive use of ECMO during a procedure in which severe hemodynamic instability could be predicted. We discuss this concept of ECMO use in the context of accepted indications for ECMO in cardiac patients and encourage an expanded role for its use to prevent cardiorespiratory collapse in planned interventions on compromised patients who are at risk of acute deterioration.