The oxygen cost of rehabilitation interventions in mechanically ventilated patients: an observational study.

OBJECTIVE Early rehabilitation is assumed to be a crucial intervention to facilitate weaning from mechanical ventilation in critically ill patients and to limit their long-term functional dependence. However, little is known about the physiological load imposed on patients during such interventions. Without the ability to quantify the exercise intensity of rehabilitation interventions it is impossible to establish a clear separation between usual care and intervention groups in randomised controlled trials. This may explain the lack of definitive benefit of rehabilitation in published trials. We sought to characterise the physiological load, measured as oxygen consumption (V˙O2), of the physical activities carried out during rehabilitation interventions in mechanically ventilated participants. DESIGN Observational study. SETTING Single centre medical-surgical university hospital ICU. PARTICIPANTS 26 mechanically ventilated participants ventilated >7 days, able to participate in a rehabilitation program. INTERVENTION Oxygen consumption (measured by the Medgraphics Ultima breath-by-breath gas exchange analysis system) and heart rate were measured continuously pre-, during and post-standard rehabilitation sessions. RESULTS 52 sessions were recorded in 26 participants. There was considerable variation in the oxygen cost of the physical activities between participants. The recovery time for 1 in 4 rehabilitation sessions was longer than the rehabilitation activity time. CONCLUSIONS Absolute exercise intensity in mechanically ventilated ICU participants, as measured by oxygen consumption, is not activity-dependent.

• Publication year

  2019

• Venue

  Physiotherapy

• Publication date

  2019-07-02

• Fields of study

  Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/J.PHYSIO.2019.06.008PMID 32026817
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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