Thesis & Dissertations

The current study was conducted as a result of the high incident rates of ventilator associated pneumonia (VAP). This research is a Quasi-experimental research conducted on 60 adult patients. It was conducted at the intensive care unit of the Lebanese Canadian hospital. Different suctioning modalities were implemented to reduce the incidence of VAP in the closed system suctioning. The data collected over 5 days to compare among the four study groups. This tool includes five parts; patient’s profile, physiologic and arterial blood gases parameters, characteristics of the obtained secretions, deep tracheal aspiration culture results, and radiological findings and other laboratory results. The four groups were suctioned by the same procedure, except for the four different normal saline utilization interventions implemented in each of the groups. Group one of this study was subjected to suction catheter irrigation with normal saline (NS) after suctioning without instilling NS into the endotracheal tube, and group two was subjected to suction catheter irrigation with NS and instillation of NS into the endotracheal tube. Group three was subjected to catheter irrigation with NS before and after the procedure, without instillation of NS into the endotracheal tube, and group four was subjected to catheter irrigation with NS before and after suctioning with NS instillation into the endotracheal tube. Based on the findings of the current study it can be concluded that the study group which was subjected to the suction catheter rinsing with NS before and after suctioning without NS instillation into the endotracheal tube developed the lowest VAP rates. Therefore, it is recommended that normal saline instillation into the tracheal tube during the suction procedure should not be performed, and closed suction system catheter should be rinsed before and after the suction procedure with NS.