Hi all... just curious about your experience with trials of non-invasive ventilation in the neonatal population...specifically post-extubation as compared with nasal prong CPAP. Seems all the published works used the Infant Star (discont'd) with the Star Sync abdominal sensor (discont'd). Anyone tried rigging up a vent with prongs with success? Problems seem to be 1) interfacing prongs and ventilator and 20 synchrony. I'd love some ideas! Thanks, from Canada...
NPCPAP can be used on most any ventilator that does non invasive, and even invasive. The problem is the leak factor. And the annoying alarms. The Servoi,Drager Evita,Babylog,and many others try to compensate but nothing out there is perfect. If you turn up flow to compensate for the leak, you just increase resistance to flow. And thus increase WOB. You can also use long prongs with SIMV. And if you want to go to short prongs, try the Infant Flow Advance. The hat does make the infant a cone head.The prongs should be rotated with a mask to minimize breakdown, but otherwise, it enables the infant to have flow on demand and maintain FRC with minimal lung damage as with PPV. It is a little troublesome but liked by many. It is all six on one and half dozen of another. I am sad to say there is no magical Ventilator. Good luck