Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is an emerging new imaging modality not yet routinely used in a clinical setting. The generation of EIT scans is based on the non-invasive measurement of electrical properties of tissues which does not require the use of radiation. Thoracic EIT examinations have been shown to track changes in regional lung volumes at scan rates of up to 40-50 scans/s. Exper...

Mechanical ventilation deteriorates previously injured lung, but little is known about its effect on healthy human lung. This work was designed to assess the effect of prolonged mechanical ventilation on bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid composition of patients without acute lung injury. Twenty-two ventilated patients (tidal volume 8-10 mL x kg(-1), positive end-expiratory pressure 3-5 cmH2O) ...

Positive pressure ventilation is a radical departure from the physiology of breathing spontaneously. The immediate physiological consequences of positive pressure ventilation such as haemodynamic changes are recognized, studied, and understood. There are other significant physiological interactions which are less obvious, more insidious, and may only produce complications if ventilation is prol...

Acute lung injury and acute respiratory distress syndrome are clinical entities of multi-factorial origin frequently seen in traumatically injured patients requiring intensive care. We performed an unsystematic search using PubMed and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews up to January 2012. The purpose of this article is to review recent evidence for the pathophysiology and the managemen...

BACKGROUND Hypoxemia is common during one-lung ventilation(OLV), predominantly due to transpulmonary shunt. None of the strategies tried showed consistent results. We evaluated the effectiveness of ventilating the operated, non-dependent lung (NDL) with small tidal volumes in improving the oxygenation during OLV. METHODS 30 ASA 1 and 2 patients undergoing elective, open thoracotomy were studi...

The aim of the present study was to explore a novel insight to determine the positive end expiratory pressure (PEEP) for sustained ventilation after lung recruitment in an acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) model. Continuous infusion of oleic acid was performed to establish a ARDS model. Pressure control ventilation (PCV) was applied for lung recruitment with PEEP of 20 cm H2O. After lu...

One-lung ventilation is required when providing anaesthesia for operative procedures in the thoracic cavity. During this process, hypoxaemia is reported to occur with an incidence of approximately 5–10%. Unfortunately, hypoxaemia affects postoperative outcome as there is an increased risk of complications such as cognitive dysfunction, atrial fibrillation, renal failure, and pulmonary hypertens...

OBJECTIVE To review the various challenges of providing mechanical ventilation to pediatric patients with diseases of increased airway resistance, diseases of abnormal lung compliance or normal lungs. SOURCES Original data from our pediatric intensive care unit and animal research laboratory. Relevant articles included in the MEDLINE electronic database during the last 10 years. Also included...

BACKGROUND The role of gravity in the redistribution of pulmonary blood flow during one-lung ventilation (OLV) has been questioned recently. To address this controversial but clinically important issue, we used an experimental approach that allowed us to differentiate the effects of gravity from the effects of hypoxic pulmonary vasoconstriction (HPV) on arterial oxygenation during OLV in patien...

Advancements in hyperpolarized helium-3 MRI (HP 3He-MRI) have introduced the ability to render and quantify ventilation patterns throughout the anatomic regions of the lung. The goal of this study was to establish how ventilation heterogeneity relates to the dynamic changes in mechanical lung function and airway hyperresponsiveness in asthmatic subjects. In four healthy and nine mild-to-moderat...