Efficacy and Safety of Using Noninvasive Ventilation Associated With Recruitment Maneuver in Cardiac Surgery.

Cardiac surgery can evolve with complications in the postoperative period, atelectasis and hypoxemia are the major pulmonary dysfunctions. They can lead to a prolonged length of stay in the hospital, increasing morbidity and mortality. In order to prevent or reduce such complications noninvasive ventilation (NIV) has been used in the postoperative period in a prophylactic and therapeutic way. The use of positive end-expiratory pressure (PEEP) is widely practice in intensive care unit (ICU), being used in patients under mechanical ventilation, NIV and exercises with intermittent positive pressure. The recruitment maneuver (RM) consists of sustained increase of pressure in the airway using PEEP in individuals with hypoxemia, in order to minimize the deleterious effects from alveolar collapse, providing a more homogeneous ventilation of the pulmonary parenchyma increasing the pulmonary area available for gas exchange and, consequently, arterial oxygenation. In recent years the increase in the application of PEEP in cardiac patients under has shown great benefits and the use of NIV to improve oxygenation by the reversal of atelectasis is already used and recommended in hospital routine. Despite NIV being used in great proportion, the relevant literature is poor in showing studies with NIV associated with RM in postoperative period of cardiac surgery. Therefore, the aims of this study are to evaluate if the use of NIV associated with RM improves oxygenation and if it can be safely applied in coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) with cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) postoperative patients.