Liquid ventilation

Abstract

Respiratory diseases are the commonest cause of morbidity and mortality in newborn babies. During the past few years several new modalities of treatment like surfactant have been introduced. One of them, and probably the most fascinating, is of liquid ventilation. Partial liquid ventilation, on which much of the existing research has concentrated, requires partial filling of lungs with perfluorocarbons (PFC's) and ventilation with gas tidal volumes using a conventional mechanical ventilators. Various physico-chemical properties of PFC's make them the ideal media. It results in a dramatic improvement in lung compliance and oxygenation and decline in mean airway pressure and oxygen requirements. It shows further promise for lung lavaging procedures, pulmonary image enhancement, pulmonary administration of drugs and as a technique to increase functional residual capacity in lung hypoplasia syndromes. There are no long-term side effect reported.