Neurally adjusted ventilatory assist (NAVA) allows patient-ventilator synchrony during pediatric noninvasive ventilation: a crossover physiological study

INTRODUCTION: The need for intubation after a noninvasive ventilation (NIV) failure is frequent in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU). One reason is patient-ventilator asynchrony during NIV. Neurally adjusted ventilatory assist (NAVA) is a mode of ventilation controlled by the patient’s neural respiratory drive. The aim of this study was to assess the feasibility and tolerance of NIV-NAVA in children and to evaluate its impact on synchrony and respiratory effort. METHODS: This prospective, physiologic, crossover study included 13 patients requiring NIV in the PICU of Sainte-Justine’s Hospital from October 2011 to May 2013. Patients were successively ventilated in conventional NIV as prescribed by the physician in charge (30 minutes), in NIV-NAVA (60 minutes), and again in conventional NIV (30 minutes). Electrical activity of the diaphragm (EAdi) and airway pressure were simultaneously recorded to assess patient-ventilator synchrony. RESULTS: NIV-NAVA was feasible and well tolerated in all patients. One patient asked to stop the study because of anxiety related to the leak-free facial mask. Inspiratory trigger dys-synchrony and cycling-off dys-synchrony were significantly shorter in NIV-NAVA versus initial and final conventional NIV periods (both P <0.05). Wasted efforts were also decreased in NIV-NAVA (all values expressed as median and interquartile values) (0 (0 to 0) versus 12% (4 to 20) and 6% (2 to 22), respectively; P <0.01). As a whole, total time spent in asynchrony was reduced to 8% (6 to 10) in NIV-NAVA, versus 27% (19 to 56) and 32% (21 to 38) in conventional NIV before and after NIV-NAVA, respectively (P =0.05). CONCLUSION: NIV-NAVA is feasible and well tolerated in PICU patients and allows improved patient-ventilator synchronization. Larger controlled studies are warranted to evaluate the clinical impact of these findings. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02163382. Registered 9 June 2014.