Respiratory muscle weakness in patients with critical illness neuromyopathies: A practical assessment*

Patient-Ventilator Interactions

Ventilatory muscle fatigue is a reversible loss of the ability to generate force or velocity of contraction in response to increased elastic and resistive loads. Mechanical ventilation should provide support without imposing additional loads from the ventilator (dys-synchrony). Interactive breaths optimize this relationship but require that patient effort and the ventilator response be synchronous during breath initiation, flow delivery, and termination. Proper delivery considers all 3 phases and uses clinical data, ventilator graphics, and sometimes a trial-and-error approach to optimize patient-ventilator interactions. Newer modes optimize interactions but await good clinical outcome data before routine use.

Patient-ventilator interactions. Implications for clinical management

Assisted/supported modes of mechanical ventilation offer significant advantages over controlled modes in terms of ventilator muscle function/recovery and patient comfort (and sedation needs). However, assisted/supported breaths must interact with patient demands during all three phases of breath delivery: trigger, target, and cycle. Synchronous interactions match ventilator support with patient demands; dyssynchronous interactions do not. Dyssynchrony imposes high pressure loads on ventilator muscles, promoting muscle overload/fatigue and increasing sedation needs. On current modes of ventilation there are a number of features that can monitor and enhance synchrony. These include adjustments of the trigger variable, the use of pressure versus fixed flow targeted breaths, and a number of manipulations of the cycle variable. Clinicians need to know how to use these modalities and monitor them properly, especially understanding airway pressure and flow graphics. Future strategies are emerging that have theoretical appeal but they await good clinical outcome studies before they become commonplace.