ESICM - What to expect at #LUNG18

ESICM Chair of Division MAURIZIO CECCONI writes, 

​"Monitoring is crucial to properly understand and treat our patients with respiratory failure. The vast majority of patients admitted to our ICUs, for any reason, require some form of ventilatory support. The complexity of the patients we treat is increasing and we face challenges every day at the bedside that require complicated and sometimes opposing solutions. In this respect, over the last year,  the importance of proper, multifaceted monitoring tools has emerged, not only to minimise the additional injuries, but also to tailor the therapy to individual patients’ needs"


​To that end, kicking off the conference, will be a talk on what we have learned about ARDS from CT scans. This is not a new concept of course, covered by P STARK from 1987 - but radiology and its basic fidelity have changed radically over the past decades. Already we have seen in 2018, Matthieu JABAUDON from Université Clermont Auvergne unveiling his thoughts on distinct ARDS morphotypes based on lung imaging patterns. It will be fascinating to see what insight the panel are brining to us at LIVES 2018.

​Looking at the rest of the day tomorrow we are looking at respiratory drive, shunt, gas exchange, controlled ventilation, PEEP, oesophageal and transpulmonary pressures. A welcome update for a lot of us and key components of setting the scene properly for understanding what exactly we can monitor and why it 'might' matter. We're also seeing a real plethora of poster presentations on LOTS of different topics... (see the end of this post)

​Oesophageal pressures, transpulmonary pressures and diaphragmatic contractility will all be up for discussion at this conference - particularly as ever more inventive ways of monitoring these parameters become commercially available and even incorporated into ventilator modes. The question I will be trying to ask myself and answer is 'do they really matter'? The bio-plausibility of most things discussed at conferences rarely gets frowned upon, but the pragmatics of implementing changes and 'advancing' our monitoring will cost considerable amounts of money and resources. It will be fascinating to see whether there is anything new to glean from the research and whether the speakers can convince us that certain modes are superior or whether they warrant further investigation.

​I'll try to relay as much of the poster-presentation content as possible- some of the topics really do look fascinating. 

​Don't forget to follow @gas_craic on Twitter and the hashtag #LUNG18 for constant updates from the conference.

​See the topics of some of those awesome poster/oral presentations below....