A rapid blood lactate assay using a centrifugal analyser and 3-acetylpyridine-adenine dinucleotide.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic brought the outpatient management to the spotlight, especially in what home mechanical ventilation (HMV) is regarded. Our goal was to assess the main complaints/problems and the adjustments made in the appointment. We performed a transversal retrospective analysis of patients on HMV for at least a month, followed in the outpatient clinic of a tertiary hospital, in 2019’s 2nd semester. The HMV outpatient clinic consists of a pulmonologist, a nurse and a technician from the home respiratory care company (provider of HMV in Portugal). In a day-hospital regimen, patients are monitored on HMV with their equipment for at least 30 minutes with blood gas analysis and/or capnography. Ventilator data is observed in real time and also collected from the previous 3 months. A total of 301 patients were analyzed. No changes were made in 138 cases (45.8%). A total of 212 changes were made in the remainder 163 patients. Most detected problems were found in HMV software data (33.5%), such as usage, leakage and volumes. HMV parameters suffered the most adjustments (36.3%). Only 5 problems (2.4%) lead to stop HMV. All results are shown in this table: Almost half of the patients needed no changes. On the other hand, our results show how an outpatient approach to HMV follow-up allows clinicians to detect a diverse amount of patients’ complaints or problems regarding the treatment itself and, at the same time, address changes to try to fix them.