Manejo de las secreciones pulmonares en el paciente crítico

Respiratory physiotherapy in intensive care unit: Bibliographic review

INTRODUCTION AND AIMS

Patients in intensive care unit are susceptible to complications due to different causes (underlying disease, immobilisation, infection risk…) The current main intervention in order to prevent these complications is respiratory physiotherapy, a common practice for nurses on a daily basis. Therefore, we decided to carry out this bibliographic review to describe the most efficient respiratory physiotherapy methods for the prevention and treatment of lung complications in patients in intensive care, taking into account the differences between intubated and non-intubated patients.

METHODOLOGY

The bibliographic narrative review was carried out on literature available in Pubmed, Cinahl and Cochrane Library. The established limits were language, evidence over the last 15 years and age.

RESULTS

Techniques involving lung expansion, cough, vibration, percussion, postural drainage, incentive inspirometry and oscillatory and non-oscillatory systems are controversial regarding their efficacy as respiratory physiotherapy methods. However, non-invasive mechanical ventilation shows clear benefits. In the case of intubated patients, manual hyperinflation and secretion aspirations are highly efficient methods for the prevention of the potential complications mentioned above. In this case, other RP methods showed no clear efficiency when used individually.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

Non-invasive mechanical ventilation (for non-intubated patients) and manual hyperinflation (for intubated patients) proved to be the respiratory physiotherapy methods with the best results. The other techniques are more controversial and the results are not so clear. In both types of patients this literature review suggests that combined therapy is the most efficient.

[Intensive care unit profesionals's knowledge about non invasive ventilation comparative analysis]

AIMS

The literature highlights the lack of noninvasive ventilation (NIV) protocols and the variability of the knowledge of NIV between intensive care units (ICU) and hospitals, so we want to compare NIV nurses's Knowledge from 4 multipurpose ICU and one surgical ICU.

METHODS

Multicenter, crosscutting, descriptive study in three university hospitals. The survey instrument was validated in a pilot test, and the calculated Kappa index was 0.9. Returning a completed survey is an indication of informed consent. Analysis by Chi square test.

RESULTS

117 responded (65%) nurses, 11±9.7 years of experience in ICU and 9.2±7.2 in use of NIV. One of the multipurpose ICU, was initiated NIV an average of 6 years later than the others (95% CI [3.3 to 8.6], P<.001). Only 23.1% of nurses would place a non-vented mask (with no exhalation port) by conventional ventilator, the rest any kind of face mask. 12.7% believed that the mask must be adjusted to the "2-finger" fit while 29% would seal the mask to the patient's face and cover the mask opening where air escapes to facilitate patient/ventilator synchronization. In the surgical ICU agitation identifies mostly as a complication of NIV compared with multipurpose UCIs (31.6% vs 1.8%, P<.001). 56.4% of nurses do not consider respiratory physiotherapy as nursing care, with no difference between units.

CONCLUSIONS

Knowledge about types of interface is very dependent on the material of the unit. More training for complications of NIV as agitation and handling secretions it is necessary.