b ackg r oun d : multi-drug resistant strains of acinetobacter spp. have created therapeutic problems worldwide. the objective of this study was to detect integrons  in acinetobacter   spp. isolates  from ventilator-associated  pneu- monia patients using pcr method. me t ho d s : a total 51 bronchoalveolar lavage samples were obtained from patients in icu and examined for acinetobacter spp. inf...

Introduction / objectives Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) is an airways infection that must have developed more than 48 hours after the patient was intubated. Reducing mortality due to ventilator-associated pneumonia requires an organized process that guarantees early recognition of pneumonia and consistent application of the best evidencebased practices. The Ventilator Bundle is a series...

Ventilator-associated pneumonia is the most common health-care-associated infection in the intensive care unit (ICU) and computer-assisted diagnosis and surveillance is called for. The frequency of ventilator-associated pneumonia was assessed prospectively during a 6-month period in the ICUs of a teaching hospital in Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran. To determine the accuracy of the Iranian Nos...

A ventilator system provides respiratory support to critically ill patients in the Intensive Care Unit. Increasing complexity in the user interface, features and functionalities of ventilator systems can cause medical errors and cost the life of a patient. Therefore, the usability of ventilator systems is most crucial to ensure patient safety. We have evolved a specialized set of heuristics com...

To avoid tracheal wall damage or inadvertent falls of the endotracheal tube cuff pressure (Pcuff) in intubated and mechanically-ventilated patients, the authors devised a simple procedure for automatic and continuous regulation of Pcuff. The procedure, only requiring a simple aquarium air pump and conventional tubing, was first tested at the bench when applied to an intubated and ventilated lun...

Patient-ventilator synchrony and patient comfort are assumed to go hand in hand, yet few studies provide support for this common sense idea. In reality, synchrony between the patient and ventilator is complex and can be affected by the ventilator settings, type of ventilator, patient-ventilator interface, and sedation. Inspections of airway pressure and flow waveforms are reliable methods for d...

Respiratory response to selective activation of vagal afferents in the peripheral airways was investigated in anesthetized, open-chest, and artificially ventilated rabbits. Phrenic activity was used as an index of central respiratory drive before and after injection of hypertonic saline (8.1%, 0.1 ml) into the periphery of the lung to stimulate the afferents. The amplitude of "integrated" phren...