sade082

PEEP is an abbreviation for Positive End Expiratory Pressure. It's a small amount of pressure above what is in room air that remains at the end of expiration. The benefits of PEEP are. Increased Residual Capacity.  This essentially means that it increases the amount of air that stays in the lungs. This works to... Recruit collapsed (atelectic) alveoli . This makes it so they participate in gas exchange. It also works to... Keep alveoli from collapsing . It keeps alveoli open so the effects of fluid or atelectasis do not cause shunting. This also helps to reduce V/Q mismatching . This also makes it so you have an... Increased PaO2 for a given FiO2 . It's a good way of improving oxygenation.  Decreases Cardiac preload and afterload . It reduces the amount of blood returning to the heart, and thereby reduces the amount of blood leaving the heart. In this way, it can help patients who are in heart failure (pulmonary edema) by reducing the amount of work their heart has to do ...

So, I enter the patient's room and leave my cow by her bed. I left because her inhaler was in another cow. I walked to the other cow. I opened the other cow. I took the inhaler out of it, and returned to my patient's room. The curtain was pulled around the bed. A nurse was behind the curtain. I said to the nurse, "Is my cow back behind there with you?" She said, "No!" I said, "I just left it there. Where could it have gone?" I said this in a facetious manner, knowing she must have moved it. She said, poking her head out from behind the curtain, smiling. "I don't know where it is?" I walked out of the room. I looked at the room number. I realized I was in room 9. The room I left my cow in was room 11. I said, "Well, it seems I'm in the wrong room." She laughed. She said, "It seems you need to drink some more coffee." "Agreed!" I said.

I love it. In response to my post, " Here is what albuterol does and does not do ," just one of the 125,000 plus people who viewed the article as of this writing complained about it. This person wrote the following: "I'm not impressed. He does make a couple good points but, in looking further at his website, the author is rather smug and also has out-dated ideologies. I would not promote him as a reference. I love it. I am a respiratory therapist. I have a job. I have to tackle these complicated issues from sort of a humorous angle, otherwise I would not be able to write about them. Keep in mind I have a wife and kids and don't want to lose my job. But at the same time, it's good that we educate each other. I had one email about the subject. The person wrote: I am getting some questions after sharing a post of yours. Do you have a citation or explanation why audible (without a stethoscope) wheezes are not brocho-spastic in nature? My response was simple: Ask ...

It's a flat out fallacy, folks. This is not true.  Editors Note:  The following is a guest post from an anonymous therapist. He said it was okay to publish his name. I decided to hold it to make sure he doesn't get into trouble and lose his job for being honest. I am soooooo tired of nurses taking patients off their oxygen because "they are retainers." The patient was wide awake and alert, and showed no signs of being lethargic, but based on a myth we are going to keep his sat at 85%. In the past I've tried to educate, but now I just roll my eyes and leave the room before I say something I might regret. This myth does not bode well, and never has, for patients. Two days ago the patient had sats in the mid 80s, and the doctor (my favorite doctor) said to increase the oxygen. So, with his permission, I placed the patient on a high flow nasal cannula ad 15 lpm. The patient was happy that he didn't have to wear a mask, and we were happy that he felt better due to ...