DiapHRaGM: A mnemonic to describe the work of breathing in patients with respiratory failure.

Background: The assessment of the work of breathing in the definitions of respiratory failure is vague and variable.

Objective: Identify a parsimonious set of signs to describe the work of breathing in hypoxemic, acutely ill patients.

Methods: We examined consecutive medical ICU patients receiving oxygen with a mask, non-invasive ventilation, or T-piece. A physician inspected each patient for 10 seconds, rated the level of respiratory distress, and then examined the patient for vital signs and 17 other physical signs. We used the rating of distress as a surrogate for measuring the work of breathing, constructed three multivariate models to identify the one with the smallest number of signs and largest explained variance, and validated it with bootstrap analysis.

Results: We performed 402 observations on 240 patients. Respiratory distress was absent in 78, mild in 157, moderate in 107, and severe in 60. Respiratory rate, hypoxia, heart rate, and frequency of most signs increased as distress increased. Respiratory rate and hypoxia explained 43% of the variance in respiratory distress. Diaphoresis, gasping, and contraction of the sternomastoid explained an additional 28%. Heart rate, blood pressure, alertness, agitation, body posture, nasal flaring, audible breathing, cyanosis, tracheal tug, retractions, paradox, scalene or abdominal muscles contraction did not increase the explained variance in respiratory distress.

Conclusion: Most of the variance is respiratory distress can be explained by five signs summarized by the mnemonic DiapHRaGM (diaphoresis, hypoxia, respiratory rate, gasping, accessory muscle). This set of signs may allow for efficient, standardized assessments of the work of breathing of hypoxic patients.