Airway Closure During Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation: The AiCLOSE Study

About 65,000 Canadians develop acute respiratory failure requiring breathing machines (ventilators) to give oxygen to their lungs. Unfortunately, up to 50% of these individuals will not survive their illness.

Mechanical ventilation through breathing machines, though potentially lifesaving, may further injure the lungs and the respiratory muscles. In the patients with the most severe and life threatening forms of respiratory failure a breathing machine alone may not be able to provide enough oxygen to the lungs and vital organs. In these critical situations, patients may require an artificial lung machine, which is referred to as extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) to temporarily replace the function of the patient's own lung and supply critical oxygen to the body, while protecting the damaged lungs. How to use the breathing machine safely while a patient is on ECMO is still unknown. Using conventional breathing machine settings while on ECMO can lead to large portions of the lungs or airway to remain collapsed, which can contribute to further lung damage.

The investigators have recently discovered a way of detecting if patients on a breathing machine suffer from collapsed airways. Knowing if the most severe patients on ECMO have airway collapse is a pivotal question that the investigators plan to answer in our study. The investigators will use our technique to determine how many patients on ECMO have airway closure and determine if this contributes to a longer time on ECMO and a longer time on a breathing machine, and if this impacts a patient's survival in the intensive care unit.