Ricerc@Sapienza

In acute heart failure (AHF) syndromes significant respiratory failure (RF) is essentially seen in patients with acute cardiogenic pulmonary oedema (ACPE) or cardiogenic shock (CS). Non-invasive ventilation (NIV), the application of positive intrathoracic pressure through an interface, has shown to be useful in the treatment of moderate to severe RF in several scenarios. There are two main modalities of NIV: continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) and pressure support ventilation (NIPSV) with positive end expiratory pressure.

Measuring work of breathing (WOB) is an intricate task during high-flow nasal cannula (HFNC) ther-
apy because the continuous unidirectional flow toward the patient makes pneumotachography technically
difficult to use. We implemented a new method for measuring WOB based on a differential pneumota-
chography (DP) system, equipped with one pneumotachograph inserted in the HFNC circuit and another
connected to a monitoring facemask, combined with a leak correction algorithm (LCA) that corrects flow