Perioperative Lung Injury

Patients are at risk for several types of lung injury in the perioperative period. These injuries include atelectasis, pneumonia, pneumothorax, bronchopleural fistula, acute lung injury and acute respiratory distress syndrome. Anesthetic management can cause, exacerbate or ameliorate most of these injuries. Clinical research trends show that traditional protocols for peri-operative mechanical ventilation, using large tidal volumes without positive end-expiratory pressure (PEEP) can cause a sub-clinical lung injury and this injury becomes clinically important when any additional lung injury is added. Lung-protective ventilation strategies using more physiologic tidal volumes and appropriate levels of PEEP can decrease the extent of this injury.