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Benefits of Pressure Support Ventilation to Ill Patients
When dealing with critically ill patients whose respiratory failure is not severe and the control of ventilation is adequate, using pressure support ventilation (PSV) offers more benefits to these patients compared with other ventilation techniques, such as intermittent mandatory ventilation (IMV).
- In PSV, the patient triggers every breath, meaning that cardiovascular effects, such as barotrauma, are avoided.
- PSV is delivered using both invasive and non-invasive mechanical ventilation. The flow of air (L/min), tidal volume (mL) and minute ventilation (L/min) are set dependent on the patient’s respiratory rate, the duration of the inspiratory phase, and the driving pressure (Abramovitz and Sung, 2019).
- As seen in the chart below, pressure, volume, and flow depend on the patient’s inhalation effort.
Figure 1: A chart showing the effect of breathing effort on pressure, volume, and flow as measured by a PSV (Source: Jackson et al., 2020).
Benefits to Patients
- Reduces the risk of cardiovascular effects and the risk of barotrauma because the pressure, volume, and flow of air is triggered by the patient’s breathing effort.
- It is beneficial to patients who are regaining the control of their respiratory system. For example, patients recovering from chronic respiratory illnesses can use this ventilator because its mechanism of helping a patient breath is triggered by the patient’s inhalation effort (Marino, 2007). 2: A non-invasive PSV in use
- Improves patients’ comfort by helping them inhale air with ease. As Jackson et al. (2020) mentioned, this ventilation technique is meant to assist any spontaneous effort from a patient, meaning that the inhalation process is enhanced. Unlike other methods, such as the IMV, the patient is in control of the tidal volume, respiratory rate, and the flow rate.
- A back-up IMV rate can be set in case spontaneous inhalations from the patient ceases.
Importance of this Knowledge to Team Members of Respiratory Therapists
- Knowledge of the mechanism and applicability of PSV is important in providing quality care services to patients. As seen before, PSV is useful among patients who can trigger spontaneous inhalations. Thus, it cannot be applied among patients with depressed respiratory drive, neurologic injury, sedated patients, or those with elevated airway resistance (Abramovitz and Sung, 2019). This information is important in ensuring that PSV is correctly used for the right patients.
- PSV is important among weaning patients because it helps them regain their respiratory system. Thus, therapists can work together to determine patients recovering from chronic illnesses and may require PSV to regain their regular breathing rate.
- It is also important for these members to set a back-up IMV to assist when the patient’s inhalation effort falls below the set percentage.
- Benefits of Pressure Support Ventilation to Ill Patients