INTRODUCTION — Conventional mechanical ventilation refers to the delivery of full or partial ventilatory support by a volume-cycled mechanical ventilator or by pressure support. It also can include the maintenance of positive airway pressure at the end of exhalation, ie, positive end-expiratory pressure (PEEP) [1]. (See "Physiologic and pathophysiologic consequences of positive pressure ventila...

October 2006 | Volume 3 | Issue 10 | e439 Over the past decade, several scholars have advocated for international standards in medical ethics and human rights [1–3]. Others have countered that such standards risk ignoring important cultural differences in the way people conceptualize medical decision-making [4–8]. Within this debate hangs a question for international bioethics: as developing co...

Mechanical ventilation is a therapeutic intervention involving the temporary replacement of ventilatory function with the purpose of improving symptoms in patients with acute respiratory failure. Technological advances have facilitated the development of sophisticated ventilators for viewing and recording the respiratory waveforms, which are a valuable source of information for the clinician. T...

The problem of development microequipment is discussed. This paper contains description of the main problems connected with micro mechanical equipment developing, requirements to the micro machine tools properties, design and control systems of the prototypes of first generation machine tools, and applications of micro equipment. The mayor idea of this paper is to show the experience of the Lab...

The ¹⁷O nucleus has been used recently by several groups for magnetic resonance (MR) imaging of cerebral metabolism. Inhalational delivery of ¹⁷O(2) in very brief pulses could, in theory, have significant advantages for determination of the cerebral metabolic rate for oxygen (CMRO₂) with MR imaging. Mechanical ventilators, however, are not typically capable of creating step changes in gas conce...

Patient-ventilator interaction is a key element in optimizing mechanical ventilation. The change from inspiration to expiration is a crucial point in the mechanically ventilated breath, and is termed "cycling." Patient-ventilator asynchrony may occur if the flow at which the ventilator cycles to exhalation does not coincide with the termination of neural inspiration. Ideally, the ventilator ter...

Computer control of mechanical ventilators includes the operator-ventilator interface and the ventilator-patient interface. New ventilation modes represent the evolution of engineering control schemes. The various ventilation control strategies behind the modes have an underlying organization, and understanding that organization improves the clinician's appreciation of the capabilities of vario...

BACKGROUND Quality control procedures vary considerably among the providers of equipment for home mechanical ventilation (HMV). METHODS A multicentre quality control survey of HMV was performed at the home of 300 patients included in the HMV programmes of four hospitals in Barcelona. It consisted of three steps: (1) the prescribed ventilation settings, the actual settings in the ventilator co...

The home ventilator market has grown in size and complexity. The aim of this study was to determine if common home ventilators are user-friendly for trained intensive care unit (ICU) physicians. Eleven ventilator models were tested by 13 ICU physicians without practical experience in home mechanical ventilation. Six tests were defined (start-up, unlocking, mode and setting recognition, mode cha...

T he emerging technology of fluid amplifiers and control devices has provided a new approach to the design and construction of mechanical ventilators. Fluidics, as this technology has come to be known, has not yet found wide application in medicine, and the fundamentals of fluid control devices are not familiar to many in that field. These are basically simple devices that employ fluids (gases ...