Ventilator Alarms in Intensive Care Units: Frequency, Duration, Priority, and Relationship to Ventilator Parameters.

Cvach, Maria M; Stokes, Jacqueline E; Manzoor, Sajid H; Brooks, Patrick O; Burger, Timothy S; Gottschalk, Allan; Pustavoitau, Aliaksei · Anesth Analg · 2020

prospective_cohort · Level II

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Abstract

Ventilator alarms have long been presumed to contribute substantially to the overall alarm burden in the intensive care unit. In a prospective observational study, we determined that each ventilator triggered an alarm cascade of up to 8 separate notifications once every 6 minutes. In 1 intensive care unit with different ventilator manufacturers, the distribution of high-priority alarms was manufacturer dependent with 8.6% of alarms from 1 type and 89.8% of alarms from another type of ventilator. Alarm limits were not a function of patient-specific ventilator settings.

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