The main objective of the study presented in this thesis has been the investigation
of mechanisms related to the decrease in airway pressure during
an inspiratory pause in mechanically ventilated subjects. In particular, we
have paid attention to two of these mechanisms, i.e. viscoelasticity and the
in:fl.uence of continuous gas exchange on lung volume. We aimed at estimat-_
ing the errors in the determination of CRs when assuming the pressure after
an inspiratory pause of 1.5 s to be equal to 'the' static recoil pressure of
the respiratory system, which is a common assumption in clinical practice
[57,90,98]. In addition we aimed at an evaluation of other methods for the
estimation of CRs during mechanical ventilation.
This study was performed in animals for reasons oflarge series of observations
in each subject in order to evaluate the accuracy and the reliability
of a diversity of standardized methods for the estimation of CRS· We have
used piglets