Although mechanical ventilation can save the lives of critically ill patients, it is associated
with multiple complications. Some of them may be related temporally and not caused by
ventilatory support per sé, but many are a direct result of positive-pressure ventilation. The
risk of barotrauma, for example, increases with mechanical ventilation, whereas nosocomial
pneumonia relies on a variety of clinical factors, one of which is concurrent intubation. In a
study by Zwillich and colleagues37 prospectively examining complications in ventilated …