Positional hypoxemia during artificial ventilation.
The effect of body position was studied in 8 patients with predominantly unilateral lung disease, who were admitted to an ICU and placed under artificial ventilation. Significant changes in PaO2 were observed when body position was changed from supine to lateral decubitus. PaO2 increased from 149 to 227 torr when the sick lung was up (p less than .01), but decreased to 106 torr when the sick lung was down (p less than .02). Both differences were statistically significant. The values were not different for right vs. left lung disease.
Adult↗