RESEARCH ARTICLE
Monitoring Patient/Ventilator Interactions: Manufacturer’s Perspective
Gerard Evers*, Carl Van Loey
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2009Volume: 3
First Page: 17
Last Page: 26
Publisher ID: TORMJ-3-17
DOI: 10.2174/1874306400903010017
Article History:
Received Date: 26/1/2009Revision Received Date: 28/1/2009
Acceptance Date: 12/2/2009
Electronic publication date: 12/3/2009
Collection year: 2009
open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
The introduction of reduced and more powerful electronics has allowed the transition of medical equipment such as respiratory support devices from the hospital to the patient’s home environment. Even if this move could be beneficial for the patient, the clinician ends up in a delicate situation where little or no direct supervision is possible on the delivered treatment.
Progress in technologies led to an improved handling of patient-device interaction: manufacturers are promoting new or improved ventilation modes or cycling techniques for better patient-ventilator coupling. Even though these ventilation modes have become more responsive to patient efforts, adversely they might lead to events such as false triggering, autotriggering, delayed triggering.
In addition, manufacturers are developing tools to enhance the follow-up, remotely or offline, of the treatment by using embedded memory in the respiratory devices. This logging might be beneficial for the caregiver to review and document the treatment and tune the settings to the patient’s need and comfort. Also, remote telemedicine has been raised as a potential solution for many years without yet overall acceptance due to legal, technical and ethical problems.
Benefits of new technologies in respiratory support devices give the technical foundation for the transition from hospital to home and reducing patient/ventilator asynchronies. Healthcare infrastructure has to follow this trend in terms of cost savings versus hospital stays.
