Disposable vent

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jroyster06

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Was in conversation with a flight nurse the other day. He said his small 911 ground service uses a 70 dollar one time use disposable vent. Where im at we have aggressive airway management protocols including RSI.....and 45-75 min transport times. I was curious if any of ya'll out there have experience with a cheap disposable vent. Our service has been talking about buying a real vent for our trucks it but i think with a low initial cost like this one it would be very beneficial for us! The flight nurse said its super easy to set up but i did not get into too much detail about how it worked exactly... So what do yall use? And this is for a 911 service only.. we don't do transfers.
 
My last agency had some. Very limited in the settings that you can adjust... it was more of an automated BVM than an actual vent.


Your service can't be too big, so you don't have dozens of trucks to outfit. Get a real vent for the trucks and educate the medics on the proper usage of them.
 
Can anyone post a link to them? I'm curious.
 
Our service isn't big, 4 trucks and a tahoe, but out fitting 4 trucks is hard for a service like ours. I would love to have a true vent. But say on a cardiac arrest with a hour long transport... our lucas device + a disposable vent, means if required, one person can ride in the back and do a good job of working a code once everything is set up. Now for a critical respiratory pt, a disposable vent may not be the best thing but it may be just as good as a manual bvm, assuming medics are watching waveform very closely and performing the necessary interventions for any appropriate ETC02 value/waveform.
 
Why is someone working a code for 60 minutes?
 
Lets not get off track here.... We could go into whys and whos and etc etc or we can just stick to the topic.
 
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Vortran disposable vents are the most common. Disaster stock in many places.

No alarms and only ball park settings.

Very dangerous in uneducated hands.

Purely pneumatic. Only gives 100% O2. Will drain your O2 tanks fast.
 
The disposables are a poor choice. They "might" be ok for a fresh intubation of healthy lungs, that's about it. If I recall correctly they don't guarantee a set tidal volume, and have no pressure sensing capability. Meaning you don't really have a great indication if your ventilating the patient effectively or safely.

Despite what some people are teaching, ETCO2 is not enough info to safely transport a vent patient with. You need pressure information (preferably plateau pressures along with everything), in graphics form if you can afford it.

Vents don't do CPR really well either. The changing pressure in the chest associated with compressions will play havoc with your vent.

At least with an Ambu bag you have a ballpark idea of tidal volume and compliance. A Voltran doesn't even give you that. Even an Autovent is better, and that's saying something.
 
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usalsfyre said:
Vents don't do CPR really well either. The changing pressure in the chest associated with compressions will play havoc with your vent.
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bingo!... i've played around with oxylator "vents" and they basically run off of a crappy pressure sensor. good chest compressions would totally ruin any hope of effective ventilations (using those at least)


(more expensive transport vents, however, you can set to run to a specific volume so those on the other hand are quite effective while running codes)
 
TheGodfather said:
bingo!... i've played around with oxylator "vents" and they basically run off of a crappy pressure sensor. good chest compressions would totally ruin any hope of effective ventilations (using those at least)


(more expensive transport vents, however, you can set to run to a specific volume so those on the other hand are quite effective while running codes)
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If you can keep the high pressure alarm from honking at you.
 
usalsfyre said:
The disposables are a poor choice. They "might" be ok for a fresh intubation of healthy lungs, that's about it. If I recall correctly they don't guarantee a set tidal volume, and have no pressure sensing capability. Meaning you don't really have a great indication if your ventilating the patient effectively or safely.
Click to expand...

The only time I've ever seen one used was during clinical time helping to take a respiratory arrest of some sort (can't remember the details now) up to ICU. The RRT put the patient, who was a 90+ yo female with a variety of illnesses, on a disposable vent to "save you from having to bag her in the elevator," there was a rather stern discussion with the ICU staff on our arrival to the unit about it's use.
 
Tigger said:
The only time I've ever seen one used was during clinical time helping to take a respiratory arrest of some sort (can't remember the details now) up to ICU. The RRT put the patient, who was a 90+ yo female with a variety of illnesses, on a disposable vent to "save you from having to bag her in the elevator," there was a rather stern discussion with the ICU staff on our arrival to the unit about it's use.
Click to expand...

I'm really surprised an RRT would do that. Remember folks, acute lung injury can happen in as little as 10 minutes...
 
usalsfyre said:
Even an Autovent is better, and that's saying something.
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Don't even get me started on the vents that we use. Not disposable but literally the most basic vent I have ever seen. 5 options for rate/volume and they aren't independent from each other.

The only thing I have found that they are good for is arrests.

I love the looks RRTs give me when they tell me their settings and I say "well I've got 12/500/600 (depending on which truck you're on) or 15/400..." They look something like this at me after I tell them -> :unsure: It takes a lot of coaching for a pt that has never been on our ventilator before.

We have more settings than that but those are the three that generally get the "closest" to their settings as far as rate, tidal volume and minute volume.

The one nice thing I have found about them is I can make a killer ghetto-fab CPAP setup with it, a BVM mask and a PEEP valve. McGyver for the win until our CPAP rigs show up. 43 units to outfit...your guess is as good as mine as to when we will get them.

With all that said, we are primarily 911 but also do transfers seeing as we are the only ambulance provider in the county. Our transport times are generally <10-15 minutes.
 
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