Frequently Asked Questions
What does the name VentMI™ mean?
VentMI™ stands for Ventilate Multiple Individuals. As we're a team from Michigan, the MI also pays homage to our home state
Are you able to provide individualized management for clinical improvement or deterioration?
The ability to modulate inspiratory pressures and positive end expiratory pressures individuals allows for individualized management, both if patients are improving or declining.
Doesn’t the volume of air go to the most compliant lung segments?
The regulator on the inspiratory circuit allows decreasing pressures to the patient with healthier lungs. Larger pressures are still able to reach the less compliant, less healthy patient. Individualize PEEP pressures are also achievable with the VentMI™ system.
Would positive end-expiratory pressure, which is of critical importance for these patients, be impossible to manage?
By using one way valves and integrated PEEP valves, each patient is able to obtain individualized PEEP settings at intervals of 2cmH20 to a maximum of 14cmH20
Isn’t monitoring patients and their pulmonary mechanics impossible in split ventilation?
While there is added complexity to monitoring two patients on a single ventilator, features of VentMI™ add valuable capabilities. Separate pressure monitors are placed distal to the Y splitter and pressure regulator, allowing monitoring of the distinct pressures being delivered to each patient. By briefly clamping each circuit, estimating tidal volumes delivered to each patient is possible.
Wouldn’t the added circuit volume defeats the operational self-test (causing test failure)? The clinician would be required to operate the ventilator without a successful test, adding to errors in the measurement.
Separate pressure monitors are placed distal to the Y splitter and pressure regulator, allowing monitoring of the distinct pressures being delivered to each patient.
Doesn’t having more than one patient on a ventilator at a time risk life-threatening treatment failure for all of them?
Delivering individualized ventilatory requirements and added surveillance capabilities are designed to optimize life saving care to each individual. In settings where ventilator shortages create a potential scenario of a patient not receiving ventilatory support who needs it, VentMI™ avoids the ethical issue of having to decide who will not receive that support.
If one patient needs to be removed from the circuit rapidly (due to cardiac arrest or other issue) would this alter breath delivery dynamics to the remaining patient?
Our testing has demonstrated stability to the secondary circuit when an emergent circuit clamp or disconnect is simulated