Six patients were excluded because they were not on mechanical ventilatory support at the time of the procedure, and 36 patients met our inclusion criteria.
This differentiation is important because overhydration may add to morbidity, partly because it prolongs the need for mechanical ventilatory support and the time needed to regain negative fluid balances and mobilization of edema [ 9].
This was because the attending physicians did not expect an ICU stay to exceed 7 days if the patient did not need mechanical ventilatory support at the time of randomization.
The median time from mechanical ventilatory support to OLB was 4 days (range 1 to 23).
If a patient has already been receiving mechanical ventilatory support for more than 48 hours at the time of diagnosis, then it is termed ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP).
In the literature some reports [ 5, 7, 10] have looked into the utility of OLB in patients with respiratory failure, but these studies included significant number of patients who were not receiving mechanical ventilatory care and were thus less sick at the time of the biopsies.
"We don't always have the right staff," he said, explaining that it takes a team of nurses and physical and mechanical ventilatory therapists to walk intensive-care patients safely.
Dr. Hadeed wrote: "Although David will be going home with mechanical ventilatory support at night, it is hoped that he will be able to do some additional vent weaning in the future and may, in fact, be able to come entirely off the ventilator again at some point".
Patients in whom mechanical ventilatory support was started before the study recruitment week of PRoVENT, patients receiving only noninvasive mechanical ventilatory support or transferred from another hospital under invasive mechanical ventilatory support were excluded.
3. Azoulay E, Alberti C, Bornstain C, et al.: Improved survival in cancer patients requiring mechanical ventilatory support: Impact of noninvasive mechanical ventilatory support.
