ARDS: ventilator management

In the continuum of acute lung injury (ALI) and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), the lungs are damaged following an insult that may be of pulmonary (e.g., pneumonia, aspiration pneumonitis) or extrapulmonary (e.g., sepsis, trauma, transfusion) origin. Regardless of the source of injury, ARDS is characterized by an acute onset, bilateral airspace infiltrates on chest X-ray, and hypoxemia (PaO2/FIO2 < 300), assuming no evidence of left atrial hypertension. [More…]