Is there a way to start a COPD patient with a pCO2 of 100mmHg?
Hey @rene_64
Its currently pretty difficult to build up CO2 in the blood.
The respiratory driver is pretty focused on clearing any CO2 build up as fast as possible by driving up the respiration rate (RR) and Tidal Volume (TV). To build up CO2, the RR and TV needs to be limited.
You can do this using existing Pulse functionality by looking at the logic in the respiratory mechanics configuration example to directly set the frequency and amplitude of the patient’s spontaneous breathing. It will only override the parameters you set, so you don’t have to change resistance or compliance if you don’t want to.
But that is a pretty complicated, model centric action that can be not very intuitive…
So we planning on updating the dyspnea action to allow for setting a TV severity and/or a RR severity (right now, the single severity on dyspnea only applies to TV). So as you increase the TV and/or RR seveity, the TV and RR will decrease respectily.
This should provide better control of out models to get what you need.
That sounds good. Lowering the RR allowed the patient to achieve higher pCO2 levels.