Respiratory polygraphy monitoring of intensive care patients receiving non-invasive ventilation.

INTRODUCTION: Patients that started on Non-Invasive Ventilation (NIV) need to define several parameters selected on the basis of diurnal arterial blood gas and underlying disease. We hypothesize that respiratory polygraphy (RP) could be useful to monitor NIV. This retrospective work describes RP findings and their impact on the setting of continuous flow ventilators from patients on NIV of Intensive Care Unit (ICU).

MATERIAL AND METHODS: Patient's data on NIV from at the ICU of Hospital Británico were included in this study. RP recordings were performed in all of them. Respiratory events, such as ventilatory pattern changes, impact on oximetry or tidal volume, were observed to modify the ventilatory mode after RP.

RESULTS: The RP findings have contributes to change the ventilatory mode for one third of the patients. The mean values of expiratory positive airway pressure (EPAP) and inspiratory positive airway pressure (IPAP) were not significantly different across all the population before or after RP: 8.7±0.3 vs. 8.6±0.4; p<0.88 and 18.6±0.6 vs. 17.7±0.7; p<0.26 respectively, however, half the patients presented > 2 cmH2 O pressure value changes after RP.

CONCLUSIONS: RP recordings could contribute to broad range of data useful to make decisions about changes in programming and allowed to identify adverse events related to positive pressure.