AANA Journal course: new technologies in anesthesia: update for nurse anesthetists--high frequency ventilation.

The introduction of high frequency ventilation (HFV) to the clinical arena has offered patients with severe respiratory disease a method for adequate ventilation and oxygenation with improved hemodynamics and diminished lung barotrauma. The scientific community has been investigating for a number of years the mechanism of gas transport in the airways using high frequencies with tidal volumes approaching or less than anatomical dead space. Clinicians have been attempting to identify the clinical circumstances for which this new technology can be applied. This course will discuss some of these theoretical mechanisms responsible for gas transport during three types of HFV, and also present the high frequency ventilators which have been recently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the clinical indications for use for each of them.