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Intensive Care Medicine Experimental
Fig. 7 | Intensive Care Medicine Experimental

Fig. 7

From: Personalizing mechanical ventilation according to physiologic parameters to stabilize alveoli and minimize ventilator induced lung injury (VILI)

Fig. 7

Pressure/volume (P/V) curve from an ARDS patient showing both the lower and upper inflection points (P FLEX). The hypothesis is that the lower P FLEX is the critical alveolar opening point and the upper P FLEX the point at which alveoli begin to over-distend, however, this hypothesis has been challenged [97, 98]. In this patient, ventilation with a high tidal volume (Vt = 10 ml/kg plus PEEPIDEAL = 15 cmH2O) would cause over-distension since ventilation is well above the upper P FLEX. Ventilation with low Vt and PEEPIDEAL was below the upper P FLEX. The calculated lung compliance was increased from 31.6 to 40 with low Vt ventilation [94]

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