Evaluation of the Diagnostic Performance of Electrical Impedance Tomography to Detect Situations at Risk of Lesions Induced by Conventional Mechanical Ventilation in ARDS

Acute respiratory distress syndrome remains a serious condition, with a mortality rate of between 30 and 50%. The use of mechanical ventilation with small tidal volumes, and by limiting the plateau pressure in the respiratory tract below 30 cm H2O has been shown to reduce mortality by approximately 10%, probably by reducing pulmonary hyperinflation and pulmonary lesions induced by mechanical ventilation. It is therefore now established that the respirator settings influence patient prognosis. However, around 30% of patients with ARDS ventilated with these settings supposedly protective continue to present signs of pulmonary hyperinflation on tomodensitometry, suggesting an additional reduction in the tidal volume could be required in certain patients. Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is a new imaging technique that gathers functional pulmonary information at bedside. This technique also allows a regional analysis, allowing the complexity of the spatial distribution of ARDS pulmonary lesions to be understood. The hypothesis is that EIT is a reliable method to detect at-risk situations of lesions induced by mechanical ventilation among patients with ARDS.