CT for Personalized Mechanical Ventilation

The goal of this study is to compare two different ways of helping patients with a condition called sepsis who need help breathing using a machine called a ventilator. The investigators want to study which way of setting the ventilator is better for the lungs. Here are the main questions the investigators want to answer: 1. How does the amount of air in the lungs and the way it moves differ between the two ways? 2. How does the way air spreads out in different parts of the lungs differ between the two ways? In this study, the investigators will take special pictures of the lungs using a machine called a CT scan. The pictures will show us how much the lungs stretch and how much air is in different parts of the lungs. The investigators will compare two different ways of using the ventilator: one personalized for each patient based on their breathing, and another way that is commonly used. By comparing these two ways, the investigators hope to learn which one is better for helping patients with sepsis who need the ventilator. This information can help doctors make better decisions about how to care for these patients and improve their breathing.

Mechanical ventilation is a key life support method applied to millions of surgical and critically ill patients. Ventilator-induced lung injury (VILI) is a major factor for morbidity and mortality in patients with the acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), the most severe form of respiratory dysfunction. Furthermore, mechanical ventilation settings also contribute to the risk for postoperative pulmonary complications (PPCs) in surgical patients and lung injury in critically ill patients with normal lungs at onset of ventilation. In summary, mitigation of VILI is critical to reduce perioperative and critical care morbidity and mortality, with major impact on outcomes and health care costs. In this project, we propose to apply novel CT methods to assess spatial distributions of strain and aeration and establish measures of global lung mechanics best indicative of the PEEP leading to least injurious distributions and, thus, least VILI.