Prediction of the extubation outcome through Electrical Impedance Tomography measurements

Extubation failure can occur in 10 to 25% of patients who were successfully separated from their ventilator. In which case, patients need to be re-intubated. To reduce the extubation failure rate, we monitor patients during 48h after extubation using Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT). In total, we recruited 34 patients from which 8 failed their extubation in the ICU ward. Prediction of extubation success or failure using only non-invasive EIT data show a sensitivity of 0.80 and a specificity of 0.73. The prediction for the 8 extubation failures was accurate for most right after the extubation and achieved 100% accuracy for the measurement set preceding the failure.