A New Lung Mechanics Model and Its Evaluation with Clinical Data

Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) is a major cause of morbidity and has a high rate of mortality. ARDS patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) require mechanical ventilation (MV) for breathing support, but inappropriate settings of MV can lead to ventilator induced lung injury (VILI). Those complications may be avoided by carefully optimizing ventilation parameters through model-based approaches. In this study we introduced a new model of lung mechanics (mNARX) which is a variation of the NARX model by Langdon et al. A multivariate process was undertaken to determine the optimal parameters of the mNARX model and hence, the final structure of the model fit 25 patient data sets and successfully described all parts of the breathing cycle. The model was highly successful in predicting missing data and showed minimal error. Thus, this model can be used by the clinicians to find the optimal patient specific ventilator settings.