Expert Recommendations for APRV Ventilation Settings in ARDS

Gary F. Nieman and a panel of clinicians and basic scientists published expert consensus guidance on setting and adjusting Airway Pressure Release Ventilation (APRV) for adult patients with Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS). The recommendations, developed via the Nominal Group Technique, integrate clinical experience with physiological evidence on lung-protective ventilation. The document is a 309.8 KB PDF containing a protocol for initial settings and titration based on parameters like P_High, T_High, P_Low, and T_Low.

Use Cases

• Extract recommended initial APRV settings for ARDS, such as P_High and T_High values, to inform clinical decision support systems.
• Analyze the consensus protocol for titrating P_Low and T_Low based on physiological changes like Peak Expiratory Flow.
• Identify injurious APRV settings flagged by experts to train models for predicting ventilation-related lung instability.
• Parse the guidance on transitioning from conventional ventilation modes using parameters like plateau or peak inspiratory pressure.

Strengths

• Provides expert consensus from clinicians and basic scientists with extensive experience in APRV and lung physiology.
• Integrates clinical experience with supporting evidence from published animal and clinical studies.
• Developed using a structured consensus method, the Nominal Group Technique, for iterative discussion.
• Released under a permissive CC BY 4.0 license, facilitating reuse and distribution.

Limitations

• The dataset is a single 309.8 KB PDF document, not a structured tabular dataset, limiting direct computational analysis.
• Represents expert recommendations and a position statement, not a formal consensus guideline or data from clinical trials.
• Content is specific to APRV for ARDS and disorders of normal or increased elastance, limiting generalizability to other ventilation modes or conditions.

Provenance

Source

Gary F. Nieman, published on figshare.

Collection Method

Expert consensus developed through a roundtable discussion and iterative meetings using the Nominal Group Technique, integrating clinical experience and literature review.

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last updated March 25, 2026.

Geography

null