Establish a Prospective Registration System of ARDS Patients for Improving Quality of Care

Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is defined as a syndrome of acute and persistent lung inflammation with increased vascular permeability and characterized by three clinical features: bilateral radiographic infiltrates; a PaO2/FiO2 ratio of 200 mmHg or less, regardless of the level of PEEP and no clinical evidence for an elevated left atrial pressure. If measured, the pulmonary capillary wedge pressure is 18 mmHg or less. In 1994, the American-European Consensus Conference on acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) issued the above definitions that have been widely used by clinicians and researchers (1, 2) When patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), an age-adjusted incidence of 64 per 100,000 person-years and a mortality of 41 percent were detected. Within intensive care units, approximately ten to 15 percent of admitted patients and up to 20 percent of mechanically ventilated patients meet criteria for ARDS (3-6). The mortality rate varies on the basis of the underlying cause, with most patients dying of multi-organ system failure rather than isolated respiratory insufficiency (5, 7). Large trials suggest that the overall mortality of ARDS ranges from 26 to 58 percent (8, 9). The better outcomes always came from tertiary medical centers or big clinical trials, which somewhat might conceal the fact of presence of higher mortality. The mortality rate in our hospital ever reached or even up to 67.2%(10). To improve the quality of care in ARDS patients still has a long way to. We hope to establish a prospective registration system to understand the real status of quality of care first, and then quality improvement interventions will be followed.