[Independent lung ventilation during general anaesthesia--preliminary report].
Unitaleral lung pathology presents a serious challenge for the anaesthesiologist. Conventional ventilation usually leads to over distension of the non-affected lung and hypoventilation of the affected lung. The optimal ventilatory strategy in such situations, is intubation with a double lumen tube and independent lung ventilation with two respirators. This is expensive and difficult, especially in an operating room. A novel approach to this problem is based on the use of a single ventilator with a volume splitter, which enables the independent ventilation of each lung, with the same frequency but different volumes, I:E ratios and PEEPs. We used the splitter in thirty-four patients, of both sexes, aged 19-78 years, and scheduled for elective thoracic surgery. All patients were intubated with a double lumen tube and ventilated in the supine and lateral positions with and without the splitter. When the lateral position was used, the volume delivered by the ventilator was split equally to each lung. In the lateral position, without the splitter, the distribution of gas delivered by the ventilator was unequal: the dependent lung receiving 47.4 +/- 6.8% of the total volume, and the non-dependent lung receiving 52.6 +/- 6.8%. When the splitter was used, both lungs were ventilated with equal volumes. All patients were cardiovasculary stable. A novel method of ventilation during anaesthesia is described, opening up new possibilities for thoracic anaesthesia that allows easy and atraumatic independent lung ventilation.