Pressure-Regulated Ventilator Splitting (PReVentS): A COVID-19 Response Paradigm from Yale University

Micha Sam Brickman Raredon; Clark Fisher; Paul Heerdt; Ranjit Deshpande; Steven Nivison; Elaine Fajardo; Shamsuddin Akhtar; Thomas Raredon; Laura E. Niklason

For this experiment, the circuit was connected to two mock lungs having similar compliance, and then compliance in one of the lungs was changed in increments, by applying rubber bands around the outside of the ventilator bag. The goal of the experiment was to determine the feasibility of maintaining tidal volumes in a patient with decreasing lung compliance, using the pressure-gated valves on the inspiratory limb for that patient to tune inspiratory pressure ( Figure 13 ). As is clear from Figure 12 , decreased compliance in Patient #1 could be largely offset, in terms of resulting tidal volume, by titrating the pressure on for Patient #1 on the inspiratory limb. In this study, the tidal volume for Patient #1 was maintained at approximately 330 mL, by means of decreasing the pressure-gated valve set point on the inspiratory limb from . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.