For those patients with normal IAP, further measurement ought to be performed if the patient shows evidence of clinical deterioration or develops other risk factors for IAH (1).
The inquiries remain how exactly to recognize those at-risk patients, and whether our risk assessment is sufficiently exact. Numerous causal and predisposing factors are recorded in the consensus paper from the WSACS (1). However, this long list is difficult to apply by the critical care nurse at the bedside. More than one study has identified the high BMI, abdominal surgery, liver dysfunction/ ascites, hypotension/vasoactive therapy, respiratory failure and excessive fluid balance as risk factors of IAH in the mixed ICU populations. However, the precise prediction of IAH development in the mixed ICU populations remains difficult. Because of the tremendous impact of MV on the physiology of thoraco-abdominal interactions (10,11), it does not seem reasonable to assess IAH in a mixed population of MV and spontaneously breathing patients. Therefore the current study was led to identify predictors of increased IAP in mechanically ventilated