A Pilot Bench Study of Decision Support for Proportional Assist Ventilation

The purpose was to develop a bench setup for testing a decision support system (DSS) for proportional assist ventilation (PAV). The test setup was based on a patient simulator connected to a mechanical ventilator with the DSS measurement sensors connected to the respiratory circuit. A test case was developed with parameters of lung mechanics reflecting a patient with mild acute respiratory distress syndrome. Five experiments were performed starting at different levels of percentage support (%Supp) and continuing until the DSS advised to remain at current settings. Final advice ranged from %Supp of 50-70%, indicating some dependence of baseline level, but with resulting patient effort estimates indicating that this may not be clinically important. Further studies are required of test cases reflecting different patient types and in patients.