Respiratory care
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released a surveillance definition for respiratory complications in ventilated patients, ventilator-associated events (VAEs), to replace ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP). VAEs consist of ventilator-associated conditions (VAC), infection-related ventilator-associated complications (IVAC), and possible VAP. A duration of mechanical ventilation of at least 4 d is required to diagnose VAE. However, the observed duration of mechanical ventilation was < 4 d in many previous studies. We evaluated the impact of VAEs on clinical outcomes in critically ill subjects who required mechanical ventilation for ≥ 4 d. ⋯ We found that a VAE was related to hospital mortality in critically ill subjects with prolonged mechanical ventilation, and that VAP was not.