Intensive care medicine experimental
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Intensive Care Med Exp · Dec 2016
EditorialLung stress, strain, and energy load: engineering concepts to understand the mechanism of ventilator-induced lung injury (VILI).
It was recently shown that acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) mortality has not been reduced in over 15 years and remains ~40 %, even with protective low tidal volume (LVt) ventilation. Thus, there is a critical need to develop novel ventilation strategies that will protect the lung and reduce ARDS mortality. Protti et al. have begun to analyze the impact of mechanical ventilation on lung tissue using engineering methods in normal pigs ventilated for 54 h. ⋯ If the lung is fully inflated, a large Vt is not necessarily injurious. In conclusion, using engineering concepts to analyze the impact of the mechanical breath on the lung is a novel new approach to investigate VILI mechanisms and to help design the optimally protective breath. Data generated using these methods have challenged some of the current dogma surrounding the mechanisms of VILI and of the components in the mechanical breath necessary for lung protection.