Comparative Study of High Frequency Chest Wall Oscillation and Traditional Chest Physical Therapy in Intensive Care Unit Patients

Aims and objective: The aim of this study was to compare the efficacious treatment in intensive care unit patients: high frequency chest wall oscillation (HFCWO¸VEST) versus chest physiotherapy (CPT).Background: Patients with lung disease often have respiratory infections and hospitalization caused by sputum retention. Intensive care unit patients usually have intubated and ventilator and this make it difficult to clean the airway. Methods: A comparison study with random sampling was carried out 559 patients in the intensive care unit were recruited in the study. Patients either received HFCWO therapy using the vest system (n=208) or received CPT (n=351). The primary outcomes were length of stay in intensive care unit and the duration of mechanical ventilation, comfortable with therapy and lung condition were compared between the two groups. Result: The patients treated by the high frequency chest wall oscillation, their duration of mechanical ventilation (p=0.014), chest X-ray (p<0.0001) and their comfortability (p<0.0001) were significantly better than the chest physiotherapy patients. The sputum volume did not differ significantly between the two groups (p=0.085). Conclusion: HFCWO was associated with better comfort, produced an improvement in lung condition, and reduced the number of days to use the ventilator on patients who are in intensive care units, compared to manual percussion of CPT. HFCWO can be performed in acutely ill patients who may be unable to use handheld devices effectively. Those patients need airway clearance in intensive care units; this treatment could be included among the options in chest physiotherapy.