Respiratory Monitoring with PulmoVista 500

PulmoVista 500 helps you recognise and correct improper placement of the tube during endotracheal intubation. On the monitor, you can clearly recognise that only one side of the lung is being ventilated, because the tube is inserted too deep.

PulmoVista 500 is also a vital tool for assessing how the patient's positioning affects ventilation. If the patient is responding for example well to prone positioning, the EIT images will show a clear enlargement of the ventilated regions of the lungs. The information this provides can help you decide whether repositioning the patient has achieved the desired effect and should thus be continued.

Depending on the hospital's protocol, CT and/or x-ray images of the chest are taken at various points throughout the course of treatment. If the patient's condition allows, it may be possible to use functional EIT imaging to conduct the periodic progress check instead. This could lead to a reduction in the number of x-rays and CT scans, thus exposing the patient to less radiation. Additionally, this can prevent or reduce transports of critical intensive care patient.

Serge Heines: Our intensive-care unit has 27 beds in total, as well as six more in the monitoring station. Because of our bed count, it's no wonder we often see patients with severe lung failure in our station. Finding the right ventilator settings for each individual patient is still one of the hardest part of working in this area. We believe using EIT can help find the right parameters to prevent lung injuries (VALI). Plus, by using EIT, we may also be able to reduce the duration of ventilation or improve treatment outcomes.

In the past, we primarily used PulmoVista 500 for patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), or for one-sided lung problems like lobar pneumonia, as well as pulmonary contusions. But we also used it in cases where we just didn't know what was going on in the lungs. Recently, we've all started using EIT for patients with fewer complications, or patients in post-operative care.

The regional distribution of ventilation in the lungs, breath by breath, is the most important and interesting information PulmoVista 500 provides. You can also directly monitor the effects of changes in ventilator settings. Before we started using EIT, we based our ventilation therapy on global information which we obtained either directly from the ventilator, or through arterial blood gas analysis. Now, we can really see if we've achieved what we wanted to, or whether our ventilator settings have had the desired effect. For example, there were instances where we thought we were achieving recruitment, but, in reality, the specific regions of the lungs hadn't even been reached. Or the PEEP turned out to be too high or too low. But now, we have clear information about these regions.

We let EIT guide us now whenever we change our settings on the ventilator. Only time will tell, of course, if this leads to better treatment outcomes, for example, higher quality of care, a reduction in treatment duration, or a lower mortality rate.

PulmoVista 500 visualises the ventilation and the effects of ventilation settings on your patient. It's a very useful tool, not just for choosing the right PEEP settings, but also for preventing over-distension of the lungs. In addition to that, PulmoVista 500 is perfect for bedside teaching, to help explain the mechanics of ventilation and changes in the lungs.