CLINICAL TRIAL article
Front. Pediatr.
Sec. Pediatric Critical Care
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fped.2025.1594160
A Computer-Driven Ventilator Liberation Protocol in Pediatric Patients: A Single-Center Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial
Provisionally accepted
- Children‘s Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, China
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Objective: Timely liberation from invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV) is important. We aimed to determine the feasibility of our study protocol for the conduction of a larger prospective trial to examine the utility of a computer-driven liberation protocol in pediatric patients Design: Single-center pilot randomized controlled trial.Setting: Single, tertiary care, 52-bed, academic pediatric intensive care unit (PICU).Patients: Patients aged from 28 days to 18 years undergoing IMV for more than 24 hours.Interventions: Patients were randomly assigned to test and control groups in a ratio of 1:1. The test group underwent ventilator liberation driven by a computerized algorithm combining protocolized screening, air leak testing, and spontaneous breathing testing. The control group underwent ventilator liberation driven by the attending physician according to standard care.Measurements and Main Results: A total of 40 patients (20 in each group) were randomized. Baseline characteristics of the two groups were similar. Durations of IMV were 95.3 hours (95%CI, 9.07 -181.53) in the test group and 113.3 hours (95%CI, 85.90 -140.70) in the control group and were similar (p = 0.62). PICU length of stay (6.9 days [95%CI, 5.00 -8.86] vs 7.0 days [95%CI, 5.58 -8.40]; p = 0.74) and hospital length of stay (22.9 days [95%CI,] vs 26.9 days [95%CI,; p = 0.31) were similar between the test and control groups, respectively. Conclusions: Our pilot study suggests that the conduction of a larger prospective trial of a computerdriven ventilator liberation protocol is feasible in our PICU. And a larger trial is needed to further explore the utility of a computer-driven ventilator liberation protocol.
Keywords: Critical Care, Ventilation, Pediatrics, liberation protocol, Pilot Study
Received: 15 Mar 2025; Accepted: 07 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Chen, Xiao, Lu, Liao, Liu, Xu and Li. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jing Li, Children‘s Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, China
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