BACKGROUND Positive-pressure mechanical ventilation is an essential therapeutic intervention, yet it causes the clinical syndrome known as ventilator-induced lung injury. Various lung protective mechanical ventilation strategies have attempted to reduce or prevent ventilator-induced lung injury but few modalities have proven effective. A model that isolates the contribution of mechanical ventil...

BACKGROUND There is a need for a bedside functional residual capacity (FRC) measurement method that performs well in intensive care patients during many modes of ventilation including controlled, assisted, spontaneous, and mixed. We developed a modified multiple breath nitrogen washout method for FRC measurement that relies on end-tidal gas fractions and alveolar tidal volume measurements as in...

BACKGROUND Mechanical ventilation using tidal volumes around 10 ml/kg and zero positive end-expiratory pressure is still commonly used in anesthesia. This strategy has been shown to aggravate lung injury and inflammation in preinjured lungs but not in healthy lungs. In this study, the authors investigated whether this strategy would result in lung injury during transient endotoxemia in the lung...

UNLABELLED We performed a retrospective analysis to the effects of negative pressure ventilation (NPV), tracheal intermittent positive pressure ventilation (TIPPV), and nasal intermittent positive pressure ventilation (NIPPV, volume or pressure-controlled ventilatory mode), in 114 patients with restrictive ventilatory disorders instituted in our hospital from 1956 until 2005. The patients were ...

CONTEXT Many patients in use of mechanical ventilation show clinical complications due to tracheal aspiration. Assessment and early methods are necessary, so that preventive and safety measures apply to this patients. OBJECTIVE To study the incidence of tracheal aspiration of saliva in tracheotomized patients treated in intensive care unit using two modes of mechanical ventilation and with di...

BACKGROUND Previous experimental studies have shown that injurious mechanical ventilation has a direct effect on pulmonary and systemic immune responses. How these responses are propagated or attenuated is a matter of speculation. The goal of this study was to determine the contribution of mechanical ventilation in the regulation of Toll-like receptor (TLR) signaling and interleukin-1 receptor ...

BACKGROUND: Percutaneous dilational tracheostomy is normally a bronchoscope-guided procedure. The insertion of a bronchoscope into an endotracheal tube (ETT) affects resistance, flow, and alveolar pressure. To improve airway management and ventilation during percutaneous tracheostomy, we developed a double lumen endotracheal tube (DLET). The aim of this in vitro study was to compare the linear ...

BACKGROUND Esophageal pressure (Pes) can provide information to guide mechanical ventilation in acute respiratory failure. However, both relative changes and absolute values of Pes can be affected by inappropriate filling of the esophageal balloon and by the elastance of the esophagus wall. We evaluated the feasibility and effectiveness of a calibration procedure consisting in optimization of b...

Traditional mechanical ventilation is provided with either a constant volume or constant pressure breath. In recent years, dual-control (adaptive pressure control) has been introduced in an attempt to combine the attributes of volume ventilation (constant tidal volume and minute ventilation) with the attributes of pressure ventilation (rapid, variable flow and reduced work of breathing). Adapti...