Modification of an External Low-Pressure Ventilator Alarm to allow its Remote use for Isolated Patients

Abstract

The problem of patients in isolation becoming disconnected from their ventilator systems is a serious one, as the closed doors of an isolation room usually prevent hospital personnel outside the room from hearing or seeing standard ventilator alarms. To overcome this potentially life-threatening problem, we modified a standard external low-pressure alarm to accept a simple, inexpensively built remote warning system. In use on 23 patients in our intensive care unit over a 7-month period, this system proved to be a reliable and cost-effective means of warning hospital personnel of possibly life-threatening ventilator disconnects on isolated patients.