Mechanical Ventilation

Mechanical ventilation is the use of a machine to breathe for a patient when their oxygen level is too low, they cannot breathe well enough or when they are working too hard to breathe and risk exhaustion. Long-term ventilation is performed in our ICU for patients that have severe respiratory or neurologic disease. Ventilator candidates include patients with pulmonary contusions after trauma, noncardiogenic pulmonary edema, as well as patients with certain neurological or cardiac disease.