Interdisciplinary Study to Understand Ventilator-mediated Pulmonary Ventilation

Globally, 4 million people per year die prematurely from chronic respiratory disease. When respiratory diseases are severe, intubation and mechanical ventilation are deemed necessary but with high mortality rates. The development of effective and safe mechanical ventilation to treat respiratory disease is greatly hampered by a lack of understanding of the gas transportation and exchange and fluid-structure (gas-tissue) interaction (FSI) in lungs. As a result, the operation of conventional mechanical ventilators (CMV) and high-frequency percussive ventilators (HFPV) often relies significantly on respiratory therapists' clinical judgment and expertise. There is an urgent need to develop more unified and quantitative guidelines and protocols for using mechanical ventilators in treating lung diseases. The goal of this project is to increase the understanding of ventilator-mediated pulmonary ventilation significantly by evaluating the difference in key clinically useful variables between natural breathing and ventilation (both CMV and HFPV) using FSI simulations and in-vitro experiments. The FSI models were validated with the experimental results. The results clearly showed that lung compliance plays a significant role in flow behavior in different generations of the lungs and lung tissue stress. This will help develop new unified and quantitative guidelines and protocols for using CMV and HFPV to provide desired respiratory support while minimizing ventilator-induced lung injury.