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Multiple Choice

You ventilated a pt without allowing enough time for complete exhalation. What hemodynamic side effect should you suspect?

Ventilating a patient with too little time for complete exhalation can trap air in the lungs, creating auto-PEEP (intrinsic PEEP). The resulting higher intrathoracic pressure impedes venous return to the heart, lowering preload and cardiac output, which leads to hypotension. Tachycardia may occur as a compensatory response, but the key hemodynamic change from this pattern is reduced blood pressure. Hypertension is unlikely because the elevated intrathoracic pressure tends to reduce, not raise, systemic pressure. Hypercapnia relates to gas exchange, not the primary hemodynamic effect described here.

Ventilating a patient with too little time for complete exhalation can trap air in the lungs, creating auto-PEEP (intrinsic PEEP). The resulting higher intrathoracic pressure impedes venous return to the heart, lowering preload and cardiac output, which leads to hypotension. Tachycardia may occur as a compensatory response, but the key hemodynamic change from this pattern is reduced blood pressure. Hypertension is unlikely because the elevated intrathoracic pressure tends to reduce, not raise, systemic pressure. Hypercapnia relates to gas exchange, not the primary hemodynamic effect described here.