BACKGROUND Frequent ventilator circuit changes are expensive and sometimes unnecessary. Following the worldwide trend to lengthen the intervals for ventilator circuit change from 2 days to 1 week, this study aims to assure that low rate of ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) can be maintained with cost containment. METHODS Ventilator circuits were routinely changed every 7 days in the study...

a bstract background: mechanical ventilation is one of the supporting treatments that are used for different reasons. to reduce patients’ inconvenience caused due to using tracheal tube and ventilator, sedation is routinely used. using scales for the sedation, for example, richmond agitation sedation scale (rass), may reduce dose of sedation and length of mechanical ventilation.   materials and...

VentPlan is an implementation of the architecture developed by the qualitative-quantitative (QQ) research group for combining qualitative and quantitative computation in a ventilator-management advisor (VMA). VentPlan calculates recommended settings for four controls of a ventilator by evaluating the predicted effects of alternative ventilator settings. A belief network converts clinical diagno...

The performance of the Pneupac Ventipac portable gas-powered ventilator was evaluated in two stages. The accuracy of delivery of the ventilator was assessed using a mechanical lung model at different combinations of compliance and airway resistance to simulate normal and diseased lungs. The performance of the ventilator was then assessed in 20 anaesthetized patients. The tidal volume delivered ...

Ventilator-associated pneumonia is a common nosocomial infection that results in both negative patient outcomes and increased health care costs. Recently, many efforts have been targeted at ventilator-associated pneumonia prevention, including the practice of subglottic secretion aspiration. Six randomized control studies examining the effectiveness of subglottic secretion aspiration in the pre...

BACKGROUND We aimed (1) to describe the characteristics of patient-ventilator asynchrony in a population of critically ill children, (2) to describe the risk factors associated with patient-ventilator asynchrony, and (3) to evaluate the association between patient-ventilator asynchrony and ventilator-free days at day 28. METHODS In this single-center prospective study, consecutive children ad...