Purpose: The purpose of this article was to identify the risk factors related to development of hemodynamically significant cardiac arrhythmias in patients with mechanical ventilation.
Materials and methods: Holter recording and echocardiogram were performed within 24 hours of ventilator initiation in patients on mechanical ventilation (MV) owing to respiratory failure (RF) from various reasons.
Results: From 68 patients, hemodynamically significant cardiac arrhythmias were detected in 18 patients (26.5%). Initial mean arterial pressure, maximal heart rate, and initial pH were identified as risk factors for hemodynamically significant cardiac arrhythmias. Additionally, the patients with pressure-controlled ventilation as an initial ventilatory mode developed hemodynamically significant cardiac arrhythmias less frequently than the patients with other modes (15.8% vs. 40%, P = .03). In multivariate analysis, initial mean arterial pressure (< 70 mm Hg, odds ratio [OR]: 5.5; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.2 to 24.2, P = .026), maximal heart rate (> 120/min, OR: 19.7; 95% CI: 2.0 to 190.9, P = .01), and pressure-controlled ventilation (OR: 0.13; 95% CI: 0.03 to 0.55, P = .006) were associated with the development of hemodynamically significant cardiac arrhythmias.
Conclusions: These findings suggest that during the early stages of mechanical ventilation with acute respiratory failure, hemodynamically significant cardiac arrhythmias are directly associated with tachycardia (> or = 120/min), initial MAP (<70 mm Hg), and, inversely, the initial use of pressure-controlled ventilation.