Proportional Assist Ventilation

Proportional Assist Ventilation (PAV) was invented by Pr Magdy Younes, from Winnipeg, a world-renowned expert in respiratory and sleep physiology (photo).
This was the first mode of ventilation in which the main ventilatory parameters (pressure, volume, frequency) are not set by the clinician but entirely follow patient's respiratory effort: the pressure delivered by the ventilator is continuously and directly proportional to patient's respiratory effort, estimated by the equation of motion.

The current version of PAV is called Proportional assist ventilation with load-adjustable gain factors or PAV+ and automatically calculates the compliance and the resistance of the patient, which are used in the equation of motion. These values are continuously displayed, can be monitored and do not need to be measured by the clinician.

The main setting in PAV+ is, therefore, the gain (see pilot studies and the calculator to understand the solution proposed in PROMIZING). The usual additional settings include FiO2, PEEP and trigger sensitivity.