Respiratory care
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Multicenter Study Observational Study
Lower Driving Pressure and Neuromuscular Blocker Use Are Associated With Decreased Mortality in Patients With COVID-19 ARDS.
The impact of mechanical ventilation parameters and management on outcomes of patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) ARDS is unclear. ⋯ In subjects with COVID-19 ARDS receiving mechanical ventilation, ΔP during the first 4 d of mechanical ventilation was independently associated with mortality. The short-term use of NMB facilitated lung-protective ventilation and was independently associated with decreased mortality.
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Hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP) and the need for positive-pressure ventilation (PPV) are significant postoperative pulmonary complications (PPCs) that increase patients' lengths of stay, mortality, and costs. Current tools used to predict PPCs use nonmodifiable preoperative factors; thus, they cannot assess provided respiratory therapy effectiveness. The Respiratory Assessment and Allocation of Therapy (RAAT) tool was created to identify HAP and the need for PPV and assist in assigning respiratory therapies. This study aimed to assess the RAAT tool's reliability and validity and determine if allocated respiratory procedures based on scores prevented HAP and the need for PPV. ⋯ The RAAT scoring tool demonstrated an association with the need for PPV using modifiable factors and appears to provide a quantitative method of determining if allocated respiratory therapy is effective.
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Patients who are obese are at risk for developing high pleural pressure, which leads to alveolar collapse. Esophageal pressure (Pes) can be used as a surrogate for pleural pressure and can be used to guide PEEP titration. Although recent clinical data on Pes-guided PEEP has shown no benefit, its utility in the subgroup of patients who are obese has not been studied. ⋯ Individualization of PEEP with Pes guidance may have a role in patients who are obese.
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Humidification of inspiratory gases is mandatory in all mechanically ventilated patients in ICUs, either with heated humidifiers (HHs) or with heat and moisture exchangers (HMEs). In patients with COVID-19, the choice of the humidification device may have relevant impact on patients' management as demonstrated in recent studies. We reported data from 2 ICUs using either HME or HH. ⋯ The choice of the humidification device used in subjects with COVID-19 had a relevant impact on ventilation efficiency (increased CO2 removal with lower dead space) and on complications related to low humidity, including ETOs that may be present with heated-wire HHs when used with high ambient temperatures.