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Intravenous sedation and analgesia are important therapies during mechanical ventilation (MV). However, daily interruption of these medications is associated with improved outcomes in mechanically ventilated patients. We tested a clinical pathway for the use of sedation and analgesia during MV in a cardiac intensive care unit (CICU).

We evaluated all mechanically ventilated patients in a CICU during two phases: phase 1 prior to pathway implementation (PRE) and phase 2 post-pathway implementation (POST). A total of 198 patients (98 PRE and 100 POST) and 1012 days of intubation (574 PRE and 434 POST) were included in this analysis. We found an increase in the frequency of daily interruptions of sedation post-implementation (49.3% PRE and 58.4% POST, p=0.0041). There was a significant decrease in the mean duration of MV in …