Prevention of ventilator-associated pneumonia

What it is

Ventilator-associated pneumonia is the pneumonia that appears in a patient who is intubated and mechanically ventilated, typically some days into the admission rather than at the start of it. A patient in the ICU who develops a high grade fever with an increase in ventilatory requirements on, say, day 6 of the admission fits this picture, and a chest x-ray is shown.

How it presents

The two findings to look for on chest auscultation are coarse crepitations and bronchial breathing.

The organisms to name are MRSA and gram negatives: pseudomonas and acinetobacter.