Airway pressure release ventilation and successful lung donation.

Hypothesis: Donor management with airway pressure release ventilation (APRV) improves oxygenation and increases lung donation while maintaining equivalent graft survival.

Design: Retrospective case series.

Setting: Private, tertiary care, level I trauma center.

Donation after cardiac death: lessons learned.

Despite the increasingly positive outcome of organ transplantation as an accepted treatment of end-stage organ diseases, an average of 15 people die each day awaiting organ transplantation. According to the United Network for Organ Sharing, there are more than 90,000 people in the United States waiting for an organ transplant. In the United States, less than 1% of all deaths are attributed to brain death.

Improved organ procurement through implementation of evidence-based practice.

Michigan, like most other states in the nation, has a clear need for more organ donors for transplantation; at this time, there are more than 2,800 patients in the state awaiting organs. We have evaluated the effects of a process improvement program designed to increase the number of organ donors and the number of organs donated from appropriate trauma patients. In 2005, William Beaumont Hospital began working with the Michigan Hospital Association Keystone Center and more than 40 hospitals across Michigan to implement evidence-based practices in organ donation focused on 4 specific outcomes and process measures.

Technique for assessing nasal airway resistance in patients treated prosthetically.

This investigation was designed to compare nasal airway resistance (Rnaw) values by use of "head-out" plethysmography and standard posterior pressure-flow rhinometry. Fourteen adults who had prostheses because of velopharyngeal inadequacy caused by a variety of etiologic conditions were examined. Each patient performed rest breathing and sustained /m/ productions to develop Rnaw values for comparison.