Modification of a ventilator pressure monitoring circuit to permit display of mean airway pressure.
We modified the pressure gauge of a Bourns BP200 infant ventilator to allow it to display either mean airway pressure (Paw) or conventional airway pressure fluctuations. The modification consists of a pneumatic toggle switch and a needle valve connected in-line to the pressure gauge. When the switch is activated, the resistance of the needle valve and the compliance of the pressure gauge combine to form a pneumatic low-pass filter, whose output is read as Paw on the pressure gauge.
D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007385:Intermittent Positive-Pressure Ventilation / Q000295:instrumentation*; D011175:Positive-Pressure Respiration / Q000295:instrumentation*; D013997:Time Factors