Volume Guarantee Ventilation: Pressure May Reduce During Obstructed Flow
Abstract
We report two unexpected observations during ventilation with the Dräger Babylog 8000+ in volume guarantee mode. Firstly, during complete obstruction to gas flow down the endotracheal tube the inflating pressure was reduced to half-way between the maximum inflating pressure and the positive end expiratory pressure despite not achieving the set expired tidal volume. Secondly, an external Dräger waveform monitor may stop displaying real-time waveforms when a tube obstructed alarm occurs. We present an illustrative case and investigations of these phenomena using a test lung.
