Comparative Study of the Prognosis of Patients with Septic Shock Related to Ventilator Associated Pneumonia Using Variance of Arterial and Venous CO2 versus Serum Lactate

Abstract

Mechanical ventilation is a life-sustaining therapy and a very common modality in intensive care units and has been used since the late 19th century till now with vast development and improvement in practice especially in the last 20 years. As any invasive procedure used in medical practice it has its side effects and complications related to the device itself or the underling disease. In this study we focused on the related ventilator associated pneumonia “VAP” as the most common complication related to the usage of mechanical ventilation. VAP is a type of hospital-acquired pneumonia that occurs more than 48 hours after endotracheal intubation, VAP is the second most common nosocomial infection and the leading cause of death from nosocomial infections in critically ill patients, VAP incidence ranges from 38 % to 57.5 % according to Egyptian studies. Diagnosing VAP sometimes offers a challenge as the critical care patient usually has multiple co-morbidities and the VAP classically presents with symptoms such as fever, rising inflammatory markers, respiratory distress, and worsening respiratory parameters which may be due to other pathology or related to the original disease, one scoring system which is helpful is the clinical pulmonary infection score (CPIS score).