So in my last post I quickly reviewed the basics of Ptp-guided ventilation. So here is a case. We had a woman in her 60’s admitted with bilateral pneumonia, intubated and ventilated. She is morbidly obese and diabetic. Despite antibiotics and usual care, she was getting progressively worse, and was labelled “ARDS.” POCUS showed she was not in terrible venous congestion, and she had been digressed to a relatively normal IVC. Slowly her ventilator settings crept up to a PEEP of 14 and FiO2 of 100%. As the plateau pressures were approaching 35, we were getting a little antsy, so decided to put in the esophageal balloon and get a better grip as to what was going on.
Here are her original readings:
So here we can see that her Pes in expiration is around 23. With a PEEP at 15, that gives us a Pep (exp) of -8. That likely represents a fair bit of atelectasis/derecruitment. Here are some measurements:
Her dynamic compliance is 21, and static 24. Not too great. Her PV loops are interesting, certainly not showing any over distension (the penguin beak look), and, as Jon Emile Kenny (@heart_lung) cleverly explains about the Pop tracing:
“On this patient, the stress index appears to be low, which is somewhat consistent with your Ptp tracing. there is a terminal fall in the Ptp [wave looks like an upside down U] which suggests terminal airway recruitment; that is, during the terminal portion of the breath, the Ptp is falling with equivalent volume delivered [again only works with square-wave/constant flow]. in other words, if [at the end of the breath] less Ptp is needed to accommodate equivalent flow/volume, there is terminal increase in compliance/decrease in elastance – or lung units are recruitedSo these numbers suggest that there is extrinsic compression of the lung, due to chest wall weight and abdominal pressure. This makes the airway pressure (Paw) not representative of alveolar stretch, and hence not a good guide of ventilation. The PEEP, despite being fairly high, is below the level needed to prevent atelectasis.”
Indeed Jon, that appears to be the case.
So we started to raise the PEEP, trying to get the Ptp (exp) closer to zero:
So we can see that our Ptp (exp) is approaching zero, and the PV loops suggest there is still no over distension. In fact, the compliance, as Jon had predicted, improves slightly. The plateau pressures are up into the mid 40’s which, without a balloon, would be pretty concerning. But the Ptp (insp) is less worrisome, in the mid 20’s, about at the limit we’d like.
At this point, still seeing that increasing compliance, we continue raising the PEEP to 23, and actually see the plateau pressures start to drop, consistent with having recruited lung. Now the Ptp (insp) is 23, and the compliances have increased.
We thus leave things as is, and by the next morning, we are down to 30% FiO2. Here are the before and after CXRs:
So a fair bit of her “ARDS” was actually atelectasis related to obesity and increased intra-abdominal pressure, and that what seems like exceedingly high PEEP is actually just enough to prevent atelectasis.
Love to hear from others who use the technology, or just interested!
cheers
Philippe
thinking critical care 