A Simulated Single Ventilator / Dual Patient Ventilation Strategy for Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Jose A. Solis-Lemus; Edward Costar; Denis Doorly; Eric C. Kerrigan; Caroline H. Kennedy; Frances Tait; Steven A Niederer; Peter E. Vincent; Steven E. Williams

Given the current interest globally on finding alternative ventilation strategies, the UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) have released guidelines of the minimum requirement for rapidly manufactured ventilation system. 22 They state that, for the option of using pressure-controlled ventilation, both the Positive Inspiratory Pressure (PIP) and the Positive End Expiratory Pressure (PEEP) must be controlled. It is known that this is particularly important in this cohort of patients who will have differing lung physiology and therefore differing ventilatory requirements. In this work we have shown that through adaptation to the conventional ventilator splitter using variable resistances it is possible to control the tidal volume to each patient through controlling the specific PIP delivered to each patient. We hypothesize that addition of resistors on the . CC-BY 4.0 International license It is made available under a is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.