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Published on: September 6, 2024
Ventilator Alarms in Intensive Care Units: Frequency, Duration, Priority, and Relationship to Ventilator Parameters
Maria M Cvach1, Jacqueline E Stokes, Sajid H Manzoor
1From the *Department of Integrated Healthcare Delivery, Johns Hopkins Health System, Baltimore, Maryland †Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, Maryland.
Abstract:
Ventilator alarms have long been presumed to contribute substantially to the overall alarm burden in the intensive care unit. In a prospective observational study, we determined that each ventilator triggered an alarm cascade of up to 8 separate notifications once every 6 minutes. In 1 intensive care unit with different ventilator manufacturers, the distribution of high-priority alarms was manufacturer dependent with 8.6% of alarms from 1 type and 89.8% of alarms from another type of ventilator. Alarm limits were not a function of patient-specific ventilator settings.
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