Researchers have found that in adult patients with acute respiratory failure, automated oxygen (O₂) titration may be more effective than manual O₂ administration at increasing the time spent within oxygenation targets, reducing time spent with hypoxaemia and hyperoxia, and improving O₂ weaning outcomes.
Erwan L’Her, along with colleagues in France and Canada, conducted a large multicentre randomised controlled trial of automated versus manual oxygen titration using data from 187 patients admitted to emergency departments with acute respiratory failure.
The key findings showed that time spent within the oxygenation target was achieved more than 80% of the time while using automated titration, compared with 50% in the manual group, and time spent under O₂ with hypoxaemia and hyperoxia were also lower with automated titration than manual administration.
Data also showed that 14.1% of patients in the automated group versus 4.3% of those in the manual group could be weaned off O₂ at the end of the study; the authors suggest these results show automated O₂ administration to be superior to manual O₂ administration for patients attending emergency departments with acute hypoxaemic respiratory failure.
The study is published today (20 July, 2017) in the European Respiratory Journal alongside an accompanying editorial, ‘Intelligent oxygen delivery in the acute setting: “Don’t think twice, it’s all right”’ by Professor João Carlos Winck, which discusses the new research and ponders how we might advance O₂ administration systems in the era of precision medicine.