Introduction Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is a non-invasive and portable lung imaging technique for dynamic evaluation of lung volume distribution. Previous studies had proved the EIT can provide information on regional distribution of ventilation and changes in end-expiratory lung volume (△EELV). The effect of EIT application in ventilation distribution of prolonged mechanical ventila...

There is now substantial evidence supporting the use of non-invasive ventilation in acute hypercpanic exacerbations of chronic respiratory failure, and early trials show nocturnal ventilatory support may benefit chronic heart failure patients with sleep disordered breathing. Attention is now being focused on innovative modes which adapt respiratory support to the user's ventilatory pattern, eg ...

OBJECTIVES To characterize patients who received tracheostomies for airway compromise or were initiated on long-term ventilation for chronic respiratory failure in PICUs and to examine variation in the incidence of initiation, patient characteristics, and modalities across sites. DESIGN Retrospective cross-sectional analysis. SETTINGS Seventy-three North American PICUs that participated in ...

BACKGROUND Expiratory flow-volume (EFV) loops are continuously displayed on the screen of intensive care unit (ICU) ventilators. OBJECTIVES It was the aim of this study to investigate the relationships of EFV to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patient outcome. METHODS This is a prospective study on COPD patients who received invasive mechanical ventilation for acute respiratory...

OBJECTIVE To introduce the notion of noninvasive mechanical ventilation as an alternative for invasive ventilation in children, describing advantages and disadvantages, indications, and the process of equipment installation. SOURCE OF DATA Literature review through PubMed/Medline, using as source articles focusing on noninvasive ventilation in pediatric populations, as well as consensus state...

INTRODUCTION During and after coronary artery bypass grafting, a decline in multifactor lung function is observed. Due to this fact, some patients may benefit from non-invasive ventilation after extubation targeting lung expansion and consequently improved oxygenation. OBJECTIVE To test the hypothesis that higher levels of positive end expiration pressure during non-invasive ventilation impro...

OBJECTIVE To analyze chronic obstructive lung disease (COPD) subjects in acute hypercapnic failure who were treated with non-invasive mechanical ventilation in a general respiratory ward. METHODS This was a two-year prospective study of 35 patients with acute exacerbation of COPD and mean FEV1/FVC relation in stable condition of 55.3 +/- 14.8% of predicted that were treated with positive pres...

BACKGROUND Advance directives (AD) may promote preference-concordant care yet are absent in many patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). In order to begin to inform AD discussions between clinicians and COPD patients, we constructed a decision tree to estimate the impact of alternative AD decisions on both quality and quantity of life (quality adjusted life years, QALYs). ...

Non-invasive ventilation has been used increasingly in recent years to reduce the duration of endotracheal ventilation and its complications, especially bronchopulmonary dysplasia. Nasal continuous positive airway pressure and nasal intermittent positive pressure ventilation are the most common non-invasive modalities, and nasal high-frequency oscillatory ventilation (n-HFOV) is relatively new ...