A multicenter randomized trial of computer-driven protocolized weaning from mechanical ventilation

• HIT Description: Decision support More info...
  
• Purpose of Study: to determine whether an automated, continuous, protocol-driven ventilation and weaning process is more successful than usual care in assessing patient readiness for weaning
  
• Years of study: 2002-2003
  
• Study Design: RCT
  
• Outcomes: impact on health care effectiveness and quality; impact on efficiency, utilization and costs
  

• Settings: Medical-surgical ICU patients from 5 teaching hospitals in Spain, Belgium, France, and Switzerland
• Intervention: patients in the intervention group were on ventilators equipped with the system to assist in weaning while control patients were weaned based on usual local practice with guidelines available in 4 units
• Evaluation Method: not described, presumably chart review
• Description: closed-loop, knowledge-based system embedded in a standard ventilator that adapts the level of pressure support to continuously recorded data on the patient's needs and comfort and automatically tries to wean the patient
• Quality of Care and Patient Safety Outcome: Wean time was greatly reduced with the computer-driven weaning (2 days vs 4 days);
• Changes in efficiency and productivity: Total duration of mechanical ventilation and ICU length of stay were also reduced.