Australian researchers have successfully demonstrated the potential to ventilate two sets of lungs of different compliances from a single ventilator. The Covid-19 pandemic has led to a worldwide shortage of ventilators and in a worst-case scenario such measures could be needed.
Royal Women’s Hospital anaesthesiologist Dr Alexander Clarke said: “While ventilator splitting has, at face value, validity in addressing ventilator shortages, we agree that on sober reflection, it is a solution that needs to be weighed up carefully as it may cause more harm than good.”
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Connecting two patients to one ventilator and exposing them to the same circuit dynamics is far from ideal, especially if one of the patients is a 100kg male and the other a 50kg female. The research demonstrates that in such cases a flow restrictor apparatus can be applied to the inspiratory limb of the ventilator to the high-compliance set of lungs to allow both patients to simultaneously receive different levels of ventilation from the same machine.
