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.
Case 3 involved a 78-year-old woman with a medical history of COPD, HT, and diabetes mellitus (DM). Her BMI score was 25.2kg/m2. She had presented to the emergency department with hypoxia, hypercapnia, tachypnea, and dyspnea, and was admitted to the ICU with a diagnosis of pneumonia. She was followed-up on in the ICU for five days, during the first two of which she was given NIMV support intermittently during the day and continuously at night. She received nasal O2 support for the following three days, and on day four she performed an apnea test between 00:00 and 06:00 am under an O2 mask (5L/min), which yielded the following results: AHI: 18/hr, AI: 8/hr, HI: 10/hr, ODI: 5/hr, min. SpO2 72%, and max. HR 102/min. It was decided that she should be scheduled to be discharged on bilevel positive airway pressure (BIPAP) support (Table ).