Lung-Protective Ventilation Strategy in Surgical Patients: Optimal Setting of Positive End-Expiratory Pressure?

More than 230 million of patients undergoing general anesthesia for major surgery require mechanical ventilation annually worldwide (1). It has been reported that 5-10% of all surgical patients and about 30-40% of those undergoing thoracic or abdominal surgery develop postoperative pulmonary complications (PPCs), such as atelectasis, pneumonia, respiratory failure, acute respiratory distress syndrome, pleural effsion, etc (2). The improved perioperative management in the past decade has significantly decreased case-fatality rate of surgical patients, but the frequency of PPCs has still remained relatively constant due to the increased number and complexity of the operations performed and the increased acuity and age of patients. It has been shown that PPCs are major causes of postoperative morbidity and mortality, and are associated with considerable costs in hospital cares (3). Thus, PPCs are important clinical problems in modern practice and the prevention of PPCs has become a measure of quality of care (4).  Citation: Fu-Shan Xue, Xu Liao, Rui-Ping Li, Xin-Long Cui. Lung-protective ventilation strategy in surgical patients: optimal setting of positive end-expiratory pressure? J Anesth Perioper Med 2015; 2: 45-7. doi: 10.24015/JAPM.2015.0007This is an open-access article, published by Evidence Based Communications (EBC). This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format for any lawful purpose. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.