Mechanical ventilation strategies: what's new and what's worth keeping?

Many technologic and management strategies related to mechanical ventilation have been introduced in recent years. Strategies that avoid intubation and get patients extubated sooner decrease costs related to mechanical ventilation. In general, "people" solutions such as weaning protocols are preferable to "technology" solutions such as new ventilator modes. It must be remembered that mechanical ventilation is supportive-it is not curative-and has the potential to do harm if applied incorrectly. There is an increasing list of examples in which short-term physiologic outcomes such as improvements in blood gas values are not related to patient-important outcomes such as survival. When new mechanical ventilation technology and strategies are introduced, a question we need to ask ourselves is whether these are solutions for problems or whether these are simply solutions in search of problems.