The excellent paper “Relationship between static lung compliance and extubation failure in postoperative cardiac surgery patients” published in the Arquivos Brasileiros de Cardiologia gave one additional tool to make more precise decisions for successful and maintained extubation in postoperative cardiac surgery.

The authors have studied 102 patients submitted to several types of cardiac surgery under extracorporeal circulation and have found the need for reintubation in 25 patients (24,5%) after the first 48 hours of primary extubation. Extubation failure patients have had lower static lung compliance than non-failure patients. The cut-off point for the reintubation was a static lung compliance of 41 mi/cm H₂O or lower, with a normal range between 60 and 100 ml/cm H₂O. Using multiple regression analysis they had observed that extubation failure was 9,1 times greater in patients with static lung compliance equal to or less than 41 ml/cm H₂O. They have also observed that lower static lung pulmonary compliance patients have worse oxygenation. They recommend that static lung compliance should be included in the postoperative evaluation of cardiac surgery patients, before extubation. This paper is part of the MSc thesis of Dr. Thais da Silva Bento, under the orientation of Dr. Desanka Dragosavac at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas.

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