The ICU patient ventilator HAMILTON-G5 wan the IDEA Design Award Silver with its GUI designed to improve safety through intuitive operation and monitoring (see BusinessWeek article).

This randomized controlled trial demonstrated that weaning in ASV results in earlier extubation, without an increase in clinician intervention, when compared with pressure-regulated volume-controlled ventilation with automode after uncomplicated cardiac surgery. The study was published in Anesthesiology, V 109, No 1 Jul 2008.

This study published in Intensive Care Medicine in June 2008 suggests that the hysteresis of the PV curve might help to assess the recruitability of the lung, and define which patient needs recruitment maneuver before setting PEEP.

The prospective study published in Intensive Care Medicine was based on 243 patients receiving 1327 days of invasive ventilation with ASV, with a range of conditions including normal lungs, ALI/ARDS, COPD, chest wall stiffness, and acute respiratory failure. In 98% of these patients, ASV could be used as the only mode of ventilation from intubation to weaning, providing different breath patterns according to underlying clinical condition. For example, ASV provided lower VT and higher RR in ALI/ARDS, supporting a low VT strategy, as compared to COPD patients.