Cuff pressure analysis of intensive care unit patients with different inclinations of the head section of the bed.

OBJECTIVES Correct cuff inflation allows appropriate ventilation, and prevents aspiration pneumonia as well as several tracheal complications. The objective of this study was to evaluate endotracheal cuff pressure and/or tracheotomy tubes at zero, 30 and 60 degrees inclination of the patient's bed head section in adult intensive care units. METHODS A cross sectional study was carried out evaluating the cuff pressure, the expiratory tidal volume (VT) and the peak airway pressure (PP) at inclinations zero, 30 and 60 degree of the head section of the patients' bed. The 30 degree inclination was considered the standard position used as control to analyze values in the zero and 60 degree positions, which were randomly ordered. The Student's t test was used and was considered significant when p < 0.05. RESULTS A sample of 12 women and 12 men with a mean age of 51.29 ± 19.55 years was surveyed. When inclination of the bed head section was changed from 30 to zero degrees, there was a 16.9% mean reduction of the cuff pressure and 11.8% mean increase of the PP. On the other hand, changing the position from 30 to 60 degrees caused a mean reduction of 18.8% in the cuff pressure and a mean increase of 13.3% in the PP. Findings were significant when p < 0.05. CONCLUSIONS To prevent air leak and risk of aspiration pneumonia, adequate adjustments and monitoring of the patients cuff pressure are necessary when inclination of the bed head section is changed.