Background: Weaning from mechanical ventilation in the intensive care unit is an important step in the treatment process. More patients in less than 6 hours after cardiac surgery can be separated from mechanical ventilation and extubated. However, 20-40% of patients after cardiac surgery, due to dysfunctional ventilator weaning response (DVWR), still remain under mechanical ventilation. Therefo...

D iscontinuation of ventilation is estimated to take up to 40% of the total duration of ventilatory support, and around 3–6% of patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) require a prolonged course of mechanical ventilation (MV). Patients being liberated from ventilatory support therefore occupy a significantnumber of ICUbeds andhave a major impact on healthcare resources. There have be...

Approximately 20% of all mechanically ventilated patients fail their first attempt to wean. Prolonged mechanical ventilation increases morbidity, mortality, and costs. No single weaning parameter predicts patient ability to wean. Weaning studies suggest that daily trials of spontaneous breathing for appropriate patients assured by standing protocol and driven by respiratory care practitioners a...

Practice guidelines on weaning should be based on the results of several well-designed randomized studies performed over the last decade. One of those studies demonstrated that immediate extubation after successful trials of spontaneous breathing expedites weaning and reduces the duration of mechanical ventilation as compared with a more gradual discontinuation of ventilatory support. Two other...

• To review the frequency of weaning failure • To discuss the logic of weaning, ie, questions to ask when approaching the ventilated patient • To assess available predictors of weaning success and failure • To describe the techniques of weaning and the evidence supporting their use • To understand special considerations in weaning, eg, auto-positive end-expiratory pressure, imposed work of brea...

An understanding of respiratory physiology is helpful when weaning a patient from mechanical ventilation. Various criteria are available that assess pulmonary function and the patient's ability to breathe spontaneously. The majority of patients are weaned without difficulty, but a small percentage will require careful evaluation. A complete assessment of the patient is essential during the wean...

INTRODUCTION This article reviews the literature on the weaning process in relation to nursing care. Weaning is defined as the process of gradually reducing mechanical ventilatory support as the patient’s own respiratory system recovers from disease (Keen, 2000). This process has been identified as one of the highest-ranked research priorities in nursing care by the American Association of Crit...

results there were 80 successful and 44 unsuccessful as well as 72 successful and 8 unsuccessful weaning cases in the first and second phase of the study, respectively. the area under the roc curves for iwi was 0.967, with standard error of 0.020, 95% confidence interval of 0.899 to 0.993 and significance level of p = 0.001, se = 94.59, sp = 66.67, ppv = 97.22, npv = 50, da = 92.5 and likelihoo...