title: A simple method for estimating compliance.
abstract: In intensive care medicine, pulmonary compliance is one of the very helpful diagnostic indices. Because of technical difficulties, however, the measurement of pulmonary compliance is often reduced to a rough guess of the compliance of the total respiratory system. The technical problems can be overcome using a computer to solve the basic equations with the least-squares fit (LSF) method. Unfortunately, this method requires such a long calculation time that bedside breath-by-breath calculations are impracticable on small computers. A simple computer algorithm (mean-values method) was therefore developed and compared to the LSF method. Compliance values calculated by either procedure were practically identical in ventilated patients. However, by reducing computing time to 30% of the LSF method, our mean-values algorithm enabled real-time estimation of compliance breath-by-breath.
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D008170:Lung Compliance; D008433:Mathematics; D008722:Methods; D008838:Microcomputers