Patient-Ventilator Interaction in the Patient with ARDS

In critically ill patients requiring ventilatory support, the primary goal is to allow spontaneous breathing as soon as possible and avoid diaphragmatic dysfunction [1]. With spontaneous breathing, however, it is critically important to ensure optimal patient-ventilator interaction because poor ventilator-patient coordination makes weaning difficult and prolongs days of mechanical ventilation. Optimal patient-ventilator interaction is crucial to ensure patient comfort and improve outcome. However, good optimization is hardly achieved, resulting in asynchronies, defined as a lack of coordination between patient and ventilator due to a mismatch between the patient’s neural time and ventilator support during the respiratory cycle, or a mismatch between the support required and provided [1–5].