Estimation of the transpulmonary pressure from the central venous pressure in mechanically ventilated patients.

Transpulmonary pressure (PL ) calculation requires esophageal pressure (PES ) as a surrogate of pleural pressure (Ppl), but its calibration is a cumbersome technique. Central venous pressure (CVP) swings may reflect tidal variations in Ppl and could be used instead of PES , but the interpretation of CVP waveforms could be difficult due to superposition of heartbeat-induced pressure changes. Thus, we developed a digital filter able to remove the cardiac noise to obtain a filtered CVP (f-CVP). The aim of the study was to evaluate the accuracy of CVP and filtered CVP swings (ΔCVP and Δf-CVP, respectively) in estimating esophageal respiratory swings (ΔPES ) and compare PL calculated with CVP, f-CVP and PES; then we tested the diagnostic accuracy of the f-CVP method to identify unsafe high PL levels, defined as PL >10 cmH2 O. Twenty patients with acute respiratory failure (defined as PaO2 /FiO2 ratio below 200 mmHg) treated with invasive mechanical ventilation and monitored with an esophageal balloon and central venous catheter were enrolled prospectively. For each patient a recording session at baseline was performed, repeated if a modification in ventilatory settings occurred. PES , CVP and airway pressure during an end-inspiratory and -expiratory pause were simultaneously recorded; CVP, f-CVP and PES waveforms were analyzed off-line and used to calculate transpulmonary pressure (PL CVP, PL f-CVP, PL PES , respectively). Δf-CVP correlated better than ΔCVP with ΔPES (r = 0.8, p = 0.001 vs. r = 0.08, p = 0.73), with a lower bias in Bland Altman analysis in favor of PL f-CVP (mean bias - 0.16, Limits of Agreement (LoA) -1.31, 0.98 cmH2 O vs. mean bias - 0.79, LoA - 3.14, 1.55 cmH2 O). Both PL f-CVP and PL CVP correlated well with PL PES (r = 0.98, p < 0.001 vs. r = 0.94, p < 0.001), again with a lower bias in Bland Altman analysis in favor of PL f-CVP (0.15, LoA - 0.95, 1.26 cmH2 O vs. 0.80, LoA - 1.51, 3.12, cmH2 O). PL f-CVP discriminated high PL value with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve 0.99 (standard deviation, SD, 0.02) (AUC difference = 0.01 [-0.024; 0.05], p = 0.48). In mechanically ventilated patients with acute respiratory failure, the digital filtered CVP estimated ΔPES and PL obtained from digital filtered CVP represented a reliable value of standard PL measured with the esophageal method and could identify patients with non-protective ventilation settings.