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Hi, it’s Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com with another quick tip for families in intensive care.

Today, I want to talk about ventilator settings and arterial blood gases and how important it is to know and understand about that, so that you can ask the right questions.

So, we’re currently dealing with a client who has their 64-year-old wife in ICU after COVID pneumonia. She’s now on the ventilator with 45% of oxygen and 350 mls of tidal volumes and PEEP of 5. And her arterial blood gas is pretty poor. That means her PO2 (partial pressure of oxygen), her oxygen levels in the blood, is around 58 millimeter per mercury and that is way too low. And carbon dioxide is around 38, which is normal so that means she’s under ventilated. She’s not getting enough oxygen.

One way to improve the arterial blood gas, especially the PO2, the oxygen concentration in the blood, is by increasing FiO2 by potentially increasing PEEP, and by increasing the volume because her weight is around 75 kilos and she’s only getting 350 mls per volume and that is not enough. It should be around 7 to 10 mls per kilo, which would bring it up to 500 to 750 mls per breath.

So that is my quick tip for today.

You need to watch both ventilator settings and you need to watch for arterial blood gases, and you need to look at chest x-rays as well. Chest x-ray result in this situation, the lady has got a pneumonia and there’s probably a shunt in the lungs that prevents from oxygen exchange or oxygen going into the blood and therefore ventilator settings need to be changed, and we can help you with interpreting all of these intensive care insights.

If you have a loved one in intensive care, go, and check out intensivecarehotline.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of the website or send us an email to [email protected].

If you like this video, give it a thumbs up, subscribe to my YouTube channel for updates for families in intensive care, comment below what you want to see next, or what questions, or insights you have and click the notification bell.

This is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com and I will talk to you in a few days.

Take care for now.