- Poster presentation
- Open access
- Published:
Reliability of pressure measurements via balloon catheters is high: an evaluation of six esophageal catheters
Critical Care volume 17, Article number: P111 (2013)
Introduction
Reliable measurement of esophageal pressure is a prerequisite for analysis of respiratory system mechanics in spontaneous breathing patients. For that purpose, various types of balloon catheters exist that differ in material, size and shape. In physical models we studied the quality of pressure measurement via six different balloon catheters, three of them containing a second balloon for measurement of gastric pressure.
Methods
Nine balloons of six esophageal catheters were investigated in three conditions: measurement of balloon pressure during initial inflations immediately after unpacking; measurement of static pressures at different filling volumes; and compliance estimation in physical models (27, 54, 90 ml/cmH2O) at different levels of superimposed pressure.
Results
During the initial inflation most catheters showed pressure artifacts resulting from material adhesion. Those artifacts disappeared during following inflations. Static pressure measurements could be performed with an error below 1 cmH2O if the balloon was filled appropriately. Overfilling of the balloon resulted in larger errors only in two catheters. Compliance estimations resulted in errors below 1 ml/ cmH2O. Superimposed pressure had no relevant effect on compliance estimation.
Conclusion
The reliability of pressure measurements and also of compliance estimation via the tested catheters is high. Only in two catheters was the filling volume a critical point for a precise measurement of pressure or for estimation of compliance. Immediately after unpacking, adhesion of the balloon material might prevent reliable pressure measurement, therefore before the first measurement overfilling of the balloon and retention of the excess gas seems strongly recommended.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
About this article
Cite this article
Walterspacher, S., Isaak, L., Kabitz, H. et al. Reliability of pressure measurements via balloon catheters is high: an evaluation of six esophageal catheters. Crit Care 17 (Suppl 2), P111 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1186/cc12049
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/cc12049