High-Frequency Percussive Ventilation

In the June 2010 issue of the Journal, Allan concluded from an in vitro study of high-frequency percussive ventilation (HFPV) that this ventilation mode may de-liver injurious tidal volumes (VT).1 Allan claimed that the results from his experiments showed that with a commercially available Fleisch-type pneumotachograph (3700, Hans Rudolph, Shawnee, Kansas) he was able to measure the mean VT of the high-frequency breaths and the low-frequency breaths delivered by HFPV. Allan’s objec-tive was to validate a pneumotachograph for HFPV and then exploit data to describe the behavior of both the high and low fre