Current Practices in Home Mechanical Ventilation for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: A Real-Life Cross-Sectional Multicentric Study.

Home mechanical ventilation (HMV) use in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is becoming increasingly widespread. The aim of this study was to provide an accurate description of the current practices and clinical characteristics of COPD patients on HMV in Portugal. The study was designed as a cross-sectional, multicenter real-life study of COPD patients established on HMV for at least 30 days. Data related to clinical characteristics, adaptation and ventilatory settings were collected. The study included 569 COPD patients on HMV from 15 centers. The majority were male, with a median age of 72 years and a high prevalence of obesity (43.2%) and sleep apnea (45.8%). A high treatment compliance was observed (median 8h/day), 48.7% with inspiratory positive airway pressure ≥20 cmH Patients were highly compliant with the therapy. In agreement with most recent studies and recommendations, there seems to be a move towards higher ventilation pressures, increased use of oronasal masks and an intent to obtain normocapnia. This study shows that chronic hypercapnic and post exacerbation patients do not differ significantly regarding patient characteristics, physiological parameters or ventilatory settings with one exception: chronic hypercapnic patients are more often obese and, subsequently, more frequently present OSA.

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© 2021 Ribeiro et al.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Dr Carla Ribeiro reports expert speaking fees and non-financial support from Nippon Gases and non-financial support from Vitalaire Portugal, Linde Saúde and Acail Gás, all outside the submitted work. Dr Paula Pamplona reports non-financial support from Linde Saúde, Nippon Gases and VitAlaire Portugal, all outside the submitted work. Dr Pedro Costa reports non-financial support from Linde Healthcare, VitalAire, and Vivisol, outside the submitted work. Dr Teresa Martin reports non-financial support from Linde, outside the submitted work. Prof Dr Wolfram Windisch reports grants and personal fees from companies dealing with mechanical ventilation, during the conduct of the study. The authors confirm that they have no other potential conflicts of interest associated with this work/publication and that there has been no significant financial support for this work that could have influenced its outcome. This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.