Evaluation of the user-friendliness of 11 home mechanical ventilators

¹ Service de Pneumologie et de Réanimation, Groupe Hospitalier Pitié-Salpêtrière, Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris, Paris, France
² Unité Propre de Recherche de l'Enseignement Supérieure EA 2397, Université Paris VI Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France
³ Service de Pneumologie et de Réanimation, Groupe Hospitalier Pitié-Salpêtrière, Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris, Paris, France; and Unité Propre de Recherche de l'Enseignement Supérieure EA 2397, Université Paris VI Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: thomas.similowski{at}psl.ap-hop-paris.fr.

	Abstract

The home ventilator market has grown in size and complexity.

Are common home ventilators user-friendly for trained ICU physicians?

Eleven ventilator models were tested by 13 ICU physicians without practical experience in home mechanical ventilation. Six tests were defined (start up, "unlocking", mode and setting recognition, mode change, pressure setting, alarm). For each test, the physicians were timed and their performance compared to a reference time established by a technician. The physicians also had to rate their global assessment of each machine on a visual analog scale.

The startup test was the only test for which there was no significant difference between the physicians and the technician, except for two ventilators. The physicians were slower than the technician to unlock the ventilator and change the ventilatory mode, with some complete failures during these tests and heterogeneous results between physicians and between ventilators. Mistakes occurred in close to 50% of cases during the ventilatory mode and settings recognition test. The mean time for the most rapid of the physicians for all the tests was 58±53 s, against 15±9 s for the technician.

Trained ICU physicians perform poorly when confronted with home mechanical ventilators without specific prior training. We hypothesise that the user-friendliness of home ventilators for other categories of users might be questionable.

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