OBJECTIVES In select burn intensive care units, high-frequency percussive ventilation is preferentially used to provide mechanical ventilation in support of patients with acute lung injury, acute respiratory distress syndrome, and inhalation injury. However, we found an absence of prospective studies comparing high-frequency percussive ventilation with contemporary low-tidal volume ventilation ...

Despite affecting an estimated 4 –7% of patients in the ICU and having a high mortality rate, there are currently a limited number of therapeutic options to treat patients with ARDS.1,2 ARMA, the landmark ARDSnet trial in 2000, established the concept of lungprotective ventilation, where subjects with ARDS receiving mechanical ventilation were randomly assigned to a set tidal volume (VT) of eit...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Benefits of intraoperative low tidal volume ventilation during laparoscopic surgery are not conclusively proven, even though its advantages were seen in other situations with intraoperative respiratory compromise such as one-lung ventilation. The present study compared the efficacy of intraoperative low tidal volume ventilatory strategy (6 ml/kg along with positive end-expir...

The normal breathing pattern of the turtle, Chrysemys picta (Schneider), consists of periods of continuous breathing interspersed with periods of breath holding. During each ventilatory period respiratory frequency and tidal volume are controlled independently. There is a large variability in inspiratory and expiratory gas-flow rates yet tidal volumes are maintained within narrow limits by adju...

The respiratory effects of stimulation of adenosine A(1) receptors were studied in spontaneously breathing rats that were either (1) neurally intact and subsequently bilaterally vagotomized in the neck, or (2) neurally intact and subjected to supranodosal vagotomy or (3) midcervically vagotomized before and after pharmacological blockade of A(1) receptors. Before neural interventions an intrave...

In many centres, height is used as a determinant for calculating predicted body weight. This predicted body weight is then multiplied to generate the desired tidal volume. The approach exhibits some mathematical effects: (1) any errors in height measurement are multiplied by 5.5 when generating the tidal volume (assuming 6 ml/kg); (2) any errors in height measurement have a greater impact on sh...

INTRODUCTION Several reports have described the usefulness of a high-flow nasal cannula (HFNC). However, the physiological mechanisms of this system are unclear. In the current study, various methods were used to investigate the physiological mechanisms of an HFNC in healthy volunteers. METHODS The physiological mechanisms of the constant-flow and constant-pressure models of HFNC were studied...

During partial liquid ventilation perfluorocarbons are eliminated mainly by evaporation via the airways. The effects of intrapulmonary perfluorocarbon volume, respiratory rate, tidal volume, as well as the level of end-expiratory pressure on perfluorocarbon elimination from isolated lungs, were studied. Nonperfused rabbit lungs underwent partial liquid ventilation (2-15 mL x kg(-1) perfluorocar...

BACKGROUND Graves' disease is an autoimmune disorder with the presence of TSH receptor autoantibodies (TRAb). TRAb are produced mainly by lymphocytes infiltrating the thyroid gland. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of the reduction of thyroid volume (TV) on TRAb level after radioiodine (RAI) administration in a group of patients with Graves' disease. MATERIAL AND METHODS...

Subjective assessment of the respiratory rate and the adequacy of tidal ventilation are the oldest and most widely practiced forms of respiratory monitoring in critically ill patients. Surprisingly, this method of assessment has itself never been evaluated in patients. The estimation of tidal volume in nine patients was performed by full-time intensive care unit (ICU) personnel and compared to ...