Monitoring Patients on Long-Term Noninvasive Ventilation

Rising use of home-assisted ventilation has required physicians to monitor home device usage to maximize clinical effect. More recently, increased emphasis on telemedicine has enabled a telemonitoring approach for home respiratory care. This chapter will provide background on respiratory devices coupled with their data monitoring capabilities with an emphasis on telemonitoring. We describe initial device setup, settings refinement, and provide a practical troubleshooting guide to common issues identified by telemonitoring data. Finally, we discuss legal and ethical considerations, reimbursement, and provide suggestions for future directions of home ventilation monitoring. Concepts discussed in this chapter tend to focus on health care delivery in the United States; however, many of the devices, topics, and concepts are broadly applicable to home ventilation practice worldwide for both adults and children.