A Reemergence Device for the Postanesthesia Care Unit

Hypercapnia is frequently used to accelerate emergence from anesthesia in the OR, but not in the post anesthesia care unit (PACU). To this end, a reemergence device has been proposed that will take advantage of hypercapnia to reduce recovery time and number of adverse clinical events experienced in the PACU. In order to design a device capable of meeting the wide range of breathing patterns exhibited by patients under sub-anesthetic levels of anesthesia, a simulation package was developed to model gas exchange during rebreathing. Using this model the user is able to manipulate variables such as tidal volume, breathing rate, metabolic rate, reservoir volume, supplemental O2 rate, etc. and view the resulting gas fractions of O2, CO2, and N2 in the lungs over time.