Prolonged Mechanical Ventilation, Need for Definition

Mechanical ventilation is one of the most common treatments in intensive care units. Often used for acute illnesses, some patients require a prolonged use of this support. Despite being a small proportion of the patients, this population requires significant amount of resources in intensive care units. No consensus definition exists on when to identify this treatment as being prolonged, and several definitions have been used in the literature. The lack of consensus is a major limitation to future research in the field. Several limitations exist to have a standardized definition in the pediatric population: a large variety of diseases, a wide variation in weights and ages, an increasing amount of support technologies, and the multiple pathways possible across the available support modes. We propose a definition and the methodology to improve it.