Case 8 involved a 42-year-old man with a diagnosis of hypertension who presented to the ICU unconscious and after a 20-minute resuscitation. His pupils were with fixed and dilated, his GCS score was 3, he was orally intubated, and had hypotension following a loss of consciousness and cardiac arrest. After detecting a subarachnoid hemorrhage in his cranial CT scan, he was started on anti-edema therapy and sedative medication. The cerebral angiogram performed twelve hours after admission to the ICU showed that there was no cerebral hemorrhage, and so a standard apnea test was performed with ApneaLink™ recording the apnea data. After nine minutes, his PaCO2 value increased from 41 to 76mmhg and ApneaLink™ showed that there was no respiratory effort present. This demonstrated that the presence of apnea can be seen and recorded by ApneaLink™ during the apnea test.\nAll patients were Caucasian.
Case 7 involved an 8-year-old girl with a diagnosis of ventricular septal defect. She presented to the ICU as intubated after ventricular septal defect (VSD) closure. She was on 7.4mcg/kg/min dopamine, 8mcg/kg/hr dobutamine, and 0.08mcg/kg/min adrenalin support postoperatively. She received a 1mg/hr midazolam infusion for 14 hours and a 0.15mg/kg/hr tramadol infusion for 23 hours. After 24 hours, her pupils were dilated and an epidural hemorrhage and shift were detected in her cranial computational tomography (CT) scan, after which the epidural hemorrhage was extracted. Despite the lack of sedative administration for the first 96 postoperative hours, she was sedated and the conditions of her pupils did not change. A reverse flow was detected in her carotid Doppler scan but no intracerebral hemorrhage was detected in her cerebral angiogram. At 98 postoperative hours, she performed the standard apnea test and her ApneaLink™ recordings were made simultaneously. Due to the desaturation occurring at the end of the apnea test that lasted 4 minutes and 38 seconds, continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) treatment was applied. Her PaCO2 value increased from 45 to 75mmHg and the ApneaLink™ showed that there was no respiratory effort present. This demonstrated that the presence of apnea can be seen and recorded by ApneaLink™ during the apnea test.