Management of acute lung injury (ALI) and the acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is largely supportive, with the use of mechanical ventilation being a central feature. Recent advances in the understanding of ALI/ARDS and mechanical ventilation have revealed that lung-protective ventilation strategies may attenuate ventilator-associated lung injury and improve patient morbidity/mortality...

Background. Airway pressure release ventilation (APRV) is a mode of mechanical ventilation that theoretically believed to improve cardiac output by lowering right atrial pressure. However, hemodynamic parameters have never been formally assessed. Methods. Seven healthy swine were intubated and sedated. A baseline assessment of conventional ventilation (assist control) and positive end-expirator...

Airway pressure release ventilation (APRV) is inverse ratio, pressure controlled, intermittent mandatory ventilation with unrestricted spontaneous breathing. It is based on the principle of open lung approach. It has many purported advantages over conventional ventilation, including alveolar recruitment, improved oxygenation, preservation of spontaneous breathing, improved hemodynamics, and po...

HYPOTHESIS Donor management with airway pressure release ventilation (APRV) improves oxygenation and increases lung donation while maintaining equivalent graft survival. DESIGN Retrospective case series. SETTING Private, tertiary care, level I trauma center. PATIENTS Forty-five consecutive organ donors. INTERVENTIONS Management with assist/control ventilation (ACV) or APRV. MAIN OUTCO...

Airway pressure release ventilation (APRV) was first described in 1987 and defined as continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) with a brief release while allowing the patient to spontaneously breathe throughout the respiratory cycle. The current understanding of the optimal strategy to minimize ventilator-induced lung injury is to "open the lung and keep it open". APRV should be ideal for thi...

STUDY OBJECTIVE We hypothesized that the continuous gas flow administration delivered through an insufflation catheter positioned above the carina during airway pressure release ventilation (APRV) would facilitate carbon dioxide (CO2) elimination, resulting in normocarbia with a substantially reduced peak airway pressure (Paw). To test this hypothesis, we compared intermittent positive pressure...

INTRODUCTION Manual (bag) ventilation sometimes achieves better oxygenation than does a mechanical ventilator. We speculated that clinicians might generate very high airway pressure during manual ventilation (much higher than the pressure delivered by a mechanical ventilator), and that the high airway pressure causes alveolar recruitment and thus improves oxygenation. Such high pressure might i...

Airway pressure release ventilation and biphasic positive airway pressure ventilation are being used increasingly as alternative strategies to conventional assist control ventilation for patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and acute lung injury. By permitting spontaneous breathing throughout the ventilatory cycle, these modes offer several advantages over conventional strat...

IMPORTANCE Up to 25% of patients with normal lungs develop acute lung injury (ALI) secondary to mechanical ventilation, with 60% to 80% progressing to acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Once established, ARDS is treated with mechanical ventilation that can paradoxically elevate mortality. A ventilation strategy that reduces the incidence of ARDS could change the clinical paradigm from ...

This review focuses on mechanical ventilation strategies that allow unsupported spontaneous breathing activity in any phase of the ventilatory cycle. By allowing patients with the acute respiratory distress syndrome to breathe spontaneously, one can expect improvements in gas exchange and systemic blood flow, based on findings from both experimental and clinical trials. In addition, by increasi...