Ineffective respiratory efforts and their potential consequences during mechanical ventilation

The implementation of invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV) in critically ill patients involves two crucial moments: the total control phase, affected among other things by the use of analgesics and sedatives, and the transition phase to spontaneous ventilation, which seeks to shorten IMV times and where optimizing patient-ventilator interaction is one of the main challenges. Ineffective inspiratory efforts (IEE) arise when there is no coordination between patient effort and ventilator support. IIE are common in different ventilatory modes and are associated with worse clinical outcomes: dyspnea, increased sedation requirements, increased IMV days and longer intensive care unit (ICU) and hospital stay. These are manifested graphically as an abrupt decrease in expiratory flow, being more frequent during expiration. However, and taking into consideration that it is still unknown whether this association is causal or rather a marker of disease severity, recognizing the potential physiological consequences, reviewing diagnostic methods and implementing detection and treatment strategies that can limit them, seems reasonable.