Wednesday, April 8, 2015

The usefulness of recruitment manoeuvres

Atelectasis or airway closure spontaneously develops following anaesthesia and mechanical ventilation. This progressive loss in lung volume can have a significant impact on the subject’s physiological condition as well as on the measured respiratory mechanics parameters.

Large amplitude manoeuvres provided with the flexiVent system, such as the Deep Inflation or Pressure-Volume curves, are very useful to prevent the development of atelectasis as they act as recruitment manoeuvres to reopen the closed portions of the lungs. Because they gently inflate the lungs to recruit airways and reset volume history, these manoeuvres can be frequently repeated to maintain stable experimental conditions over extended periods of time.

An added benefit of maintaining stable experimental conditions is another layer of standardization for your experiments. The flexiWare software allows you to tightly control the ventilation parameters (respiratory rate, tidal volume, PEEP, I/E ratio) to ensure that all subjects are studied under optimal conditions in order to produce accurate and reproducible results.

Our Applications Specialists are happy to provide additional information on these manoeuvres or any other that the flexiVent provides.

Read more:
Reiss, LK, AK Kowallik, S Uhlig. 2011. Recurrent recruitment manoeuvres improve lung mechanics and minimize lung injury during mechanical ventilation of healthy mice. PloS one 6: e24527.