High-flow nasal cannula (HFNC) has become a frequently used noninvasive form of respiratory support in acute settings; however, evidence supporting its use has only recently emerged. These guidelines ...provide evidence-based recommendations for the use of HFNC alongside other noninvasive forms of respiratory support in adults with acute respiratory failure (ARF).
The European Respiratory Society task force panel included expert clinicians and methodologists in pulmonology and intensive care medicine. The task force used the GRADE (Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation) methods to summarise evidence and develop clinical recommendations for the use of HFNC alongside conventional oxygen therapy (COT) and noninvasive ventilation (NIV) for the management of adults in acute settings with ARF.
The task force developed eight conditional recommendations, suggesting the use of 1) HFNC over COT in hypoxaemic ARF; 2) HFNC over NIV in hypoxaemic ARF; 3) HFNC over COT during breaks from NIV; 4) either HFNC or COT in post-operative patients at low risk of pulmonary complications; 5) either HFNC or NIV in post-operative patients at high risk of pulmonary complications; 6) HFNC over COT in nonsurgical patients at low risk of extubation failure; 7) NIV over HFNC for patients at high risk of extubation failure unless there are relative or absolute contraindications to NIV; and 8) trialling NIV prior to use of HFNC in patients with COPD and hypercapnic ARF.
HFNC is a valuable intervention in adults with ARF. These conditional recommendations can assist clinicians in choosing the most appropriate form of noninvasive respiratory support to provide to patients in different acute settings.
The provision of mechanical insufflation-exsufflation (MI-E) devices to enhance cough efficacy is increasing. Typically, MI-E devices are used to augment cough in patients with neuromuscular ...disorders but also in patients who are weak in an acute care setting. Despite a growing evidence base for the use of these devices, there are barriers to the provision of MI-E, including clinician lack of knowledge and confidence. Enhancing clinician education and confidence is key. Individualized or protocolized approaches can be used to initiate MI-E. Evaluation of MI-E efficacy is critical. One method to evaluate effectiveness of MI-E is the MI-E-assisted cough peak flow (CPF). However, this should always be considered alongside other factors discussed in this review. The purpose of this review is to increase the theoretical understanding of the provision and evaluation of MI-E and provide insight into how this knowledge can be applied into clinical practice. Approaches to initiation and titration can be selected based on the clinical situation, patient diagnosis (including and beyond neuromuscular disorders), and clinician's confidence.
Background: There are limited data reporting diagnostic practices, compared to clinical guidelines, for patients with chronic respiratory failure requiring home mechanical ventilation (HMV). There ...are no data detailing the current use of downloaded physiological monitoring data in day-to-day clinical practice during initiation and follow up of patients on HMV. This survey reports clinicians’ practices, with a specific focus on the clinical approaches employed to assess, monitor and manage HMV patients. Methods: A web-based international survey was open between 1 January and 31 March 2023. Results: In total, 114 clinicians responded; 84% of the clinicians downloaded the internal physiological ventilator data when initiating and maintaining HMV patients, and 99% of the clinicians followed up with patients within 3 months. Adherence, leak and the apnea-hypopnea index were the three highest rated items. Oxygen saturation was used to support a diagnosis of nocturnal hypoventilation and was preferred over measurements of carbon dioxide. Furthermore, 78% of the clinicians reviewed data for the assessment of patient ventilator asynchrony (PVA), although the confidence reported in identifying certain PVAs was reported as unconfident or extremely unconfident. Conclusions: This survey confirmed that clinical practice varies and often does not follow the current guidelines. Despite PVA being of clinical interest, its clinical relevance was not clear, and further research, education and training are required to improve clinical confidence.
The number of children receiving domiciliary ventilatory support has grown over the last few decades driven largely by the introduction and widening applications of non-invasive ventilation. ...Ventilatory support may be used with the intention of increasing survival, or to facilitate discharge home and/or to palliate symptoms. However, the outcome of this intervention and the number of children transitioning to adult care as a consequence of longer survival is not yet clear.
In this retrospective cohort study, we analysed the outcome in children (<17 years) started on home NIV at Royal Brompton Hospital over an 18 year period 1993-2011. The aim was to establish for different diagnostic groups: survival rate, likelihood of early death depending on diagnosis or discontinuation of ventilation, and the proportion transitioning to adult care.
496 children were commenced on home non invasive ventilation; follow-up data were available in 449 (91%). Fifty six per cent (n=254) had neuromuscular disease. Ventilation was started at a median age (IQR) 10 (3-15) years. Thirteen percent (n=59) were less than 1 year old. Forty percent (n=181) have transitioned to adult care. Twenty four percent (n=109) of patients have died, and nine percent (n=42) were able to discontinue ventilatory support.
Long term ventilation is associated with an increase in survival in a range of conditions leading to ventilatory failure in children, resulting in increasing numbers surviving to adulthood. This has significant implications for planning transition and adult care facilities.
Mechanical insufflation-exsufflation (MI-E) is essential for secretion clearance, especially in neuromuscular disorders. For the best outcomes, initiation of MI-E should be started at the correct ...time with regular evaluation to the response to treatment. Typically, cough peak flow has been used to evaluate cough effectiveness with and without MI-E. This review highlights the limitations of this and discussed other tools to evaluate MI-E efficacy in this rapidly developing field. Such tools include the interpretation of parameters (like pressure, flow and volumes) that derive from the MI-E device and external methods to evaluate upper airway closure. In this review we pinpoint the differences between different devices in the market and discuss new tools to better titrate MI-E and detect pathological responses of the upper airway. We discuss the importance of point of care ultrasound (POCUS), transnasal fiberoptic laryngoscopy and wave form analysis in this setting. To improve clinical practice newer generation MI-E devices should allow real-time evaluation of waveforms and standardize some of the derived parameters.
Building on the core syllabus for postgraduate training in respiratory physiotherapy, published in 2014, the European Respiratory Society (ERS) respiratory physiotherapy task force has developed a ...harmonised and structured postgraduate curriculum for respiratory physiotherapy training. The curriculum outlines the knowledge, skills and attitudes which must be mastered by a respiratory physiotherapist working with adult or paediatric patients, together with guidance for minimal clinical exposures, and forms of learning and assessment. This article presents the rationale, methodology and content of the ERS respiratory physiotherapy curriculum. The full curriculum can be found in the supplementary material.
Patient-ventilator synchronization during non-invasive ventilation (NIV) can be assessed by visual inspection of flow and pressure waveforms but it remains time consuming and there is a large ...inter-rater variability, even among expert physicians. SyncSmart™ software developed by Breas Medical (Mölnycke, Sweden) provides an automatic detection and scoring of patient-ventilator asynchrony to help physicians in their daily clinical practice. This study was designed to assess performance of the automatic scoring by the SyncSmart software using expert clinicians as a reference in patient with chronic respiratory failure receiving NIV.
From nine patients, 20 min data sets were analyzed automatically by SyncSmart software and reviewed by nine expert physicians who were asked to score auto-triggering (AT), double-triggering (DT), and ineffective efforts (IE). The study procedure was similar to the one commonly used for validating the automatic sleep scoring technique. For each patient, the asynchrony index was computed by automatic scoring and each expert, respectively. Considering successively each expert scoring as a reference, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), κ-coefficients, and agreement were calculated.
The asynchrony index assessed by SynSmart was not significantly different from the one assessed by the experts (18.9 ± 17.7 vs. 12.8 ± 9.4,
= 0.19). When compared to an expert, the sensitivity and specificity provided by SyncSmart for DT, AT, and IE were significantly greater than those provided by an expert when compared to another expert.
SyncSmart software is able to score asynchrony events within the inter-rater variability. When the breathing frequency is not too high (<24), it therefore provides a reliable assessment of patient-ventilator asynchrony; AT is over detected otherwise.
Mechanical insufflation-exsufflation (MI-E) devices increase expiratory air flow and thereby promote increased cough peak flow (CPF) in conjunction with a cough. There is little research looking at ...long-term use of MI-E in subjects with neuromuscular disease (NMD), and no long-term study has reported CPF, MI-E device settings, and adherence.
We evaluated 181 patient records (130 adults, 51 children) of individuals who received a MI-E device from our center between February 2014 and February 2018. Median age (interquartile range IQR) was 27 (14-51) y. Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) were the 3 most common diagnoses.
MI-E devices were provided to the weakest subjects with a CPF < 160 L/min. Median (IQR) settings were insufflation, 25 (23-30) cm H
O, exsufflation -35 (-30 to -40) cm H
O, insufflation time 1.5 (1.3-1.7) s, exsufflation time 1.8 (1.5-2.0) s, and pause 1.5 (1.3-2.0) s. The inspiratory flow profile was set to high in all subjects, and no subject used supplemental oxygen with the MI-E device. When comparing insufflation pressures to exsufflation pressures, a greater negative pressure was used relative to positive pressure (
< .001). When comparing insufflation to exsufflation time, there was a significantly longer exsufflation duration (
< .001). Median (IQR) CPF at the start of MI-E was 60 (10-100) L/min. There was no correlation between either insufflation or exsufflation pressures and CPF. Median (IQR) usage for the group was 60% (13.5-100%) of days for the total days. Subjects with tracheostomies or SMA type I had the greatest adherence to treatment. Median (IQR) duration of MI-E use was 17 (8.5-32) months. Ninety-six percent of subjects were receiving ventilatory support.
Greater exsufflation pressures than insufflation pressures, together with a shorter insufflation time than exsufflation time, were used. Predicting good adherence among the subjects was difficult. Subjects who produced daily secretions were more likely to use MI-E every day.
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