Original ArticleVentilation Practices in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit: A Cross-Sectional Study
Section snippets
Methods
A prospective survey was conducted between April 2007 and May 2008 in 21 European countries, including 173 NICUs (Table I; available at www.jpeds.com). The study protocol was reviewed by the Institutional Review Board of each hospital. On two predefined dates, determined by one of the principle investigators (A.v.K.), patients in each NICU were included if they were on invasive mechanical ventilation at any time point between 9:00 am and 4:00 pm that day, and if the patients' corrected age at
Results
A total of 173 NICUs in 21 European countries participated in this study and included 535 patients (Table I). There were no patients studied on both dates. Most NICUs provided level 3 care, had more than 10 intensive care beds and ventilated on average more than 50 patients each year (Table II; available at www.jpeds.com). Most of the included infants were born prematurely, resulting in an overall median gestational age of 28 wks and a birth weight of 1024 g (Table III). At the time of data
Discussion
Since its introduction in the 1960s, mechanical ventilation has been one of the cornerstones in the treatment of respiratory failure in newborns. Over time, technological advances in ventilators have provided neonatologists with new ventilation modes and strategies, many of which have been tested in randomized controlled trials.5 However, the translation and implementation of these trial results to daily clinical practice has been poorly studied. In this survey we investigated how neonatal
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Cited by (0)
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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A list of Neovent Study Group members is available at www.jpeds.com (Appendix).