Mechanical Ventilation

How Would a Computer Parse a Ventilator Screen?

Explore this below

Parsing a Ventilator screen can be tricky and is dependent on the maker and model number of the Mechanical Ventilator being used. Below is the PB840 Mechanical Ventilator.

Other Ventilators have different screens and have been quickly labeled for reserach purposes here.

Caption: This image shows a typical ventilator screen with various parameters displayed.

The intake of this screen is varied and complex and requires a careful methodological approach:

• The screen contains graphics
• The screen contains numerics for data columns
• The screen has multiple menus and signals for alarms

Isolating the areas of interest is important when discussing this machine.

Caption: This image shows a typical ventilator screen with various parameters displayed and then traced by a Python library.

Here, we traced the outlines of the data on the mechanical ventilator in green:

• We can see that there appears to be dark areas between the groupings in the areas in green
• A top, middle and bottom section are immediately available
• The bottom section has a blank area where values sometimes appear that are related to other items in the bottom section

Caption: This image shows a typical ventilator screen with various parameters displayed but only the top section.

The top section is isolated here:

• A giant letter signifies the classification of the breath as either assisted, synchronized or spontaneous. I forget if other values exist
• Text above values signify what the data value represents (PPeak aka Peak Inspiratory Pressure)
• Each value omits its unit of measurement, preexisiting knowledge of the unit of measurement is needed

Caption: This image shows a typical ventilator screen with various parameters displayed but only the middle section.

The middle section composes the graphics:

• Two Graphics are present here but 5 exist in common usage [VT/Pressure/Flow vs. Time, PV Loop and FV Loop)
• Scaling is manually done to display the graphics
• Improper scaling or abnormalities in the graphics indicates problems with the system

Caption: This image shows a typical ventilator screen with various parameters displayed but only the bottom section.

The bottom section comprises the settings input by the pracitioner and any associated information for a value:

• Each mode of ventilation may use a different input selection scheme, there are templates worth remembering
• Equivalent modes of ventilation on other machines will be labeled differently
• Additional measurements that show up are sometimes diagnostic related