Impact of Lung Recruitment Maneuvers on Driving Pressure in Cardiac Surgery

In anesthesia the incidence of postoperative pulmonary complications is frequent, especially in cardiac surgery where the incidence can reach 10%. Respiratory morbidity in cardiac surgery is favored by multiple factors and is higher compared to anesthesia in "general" surgery. The prevention of these complications is a major challenge in the management of patients.

Influence of driving pressure level on respiratory morbidity was first demonstrated in management of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) in resuscitation.

More recently, this notion has been introduced in anesthesia, with a correlation between increase driving pressure level and increase of post-operative respiratory complications.

A method should reduce these levels of driving pressure: performing lung recruitment maneuvers. This technique has been successfully tested in abdominal surgery in particular in a study published by Futier et al.. They systematized and standardized lung recruitment maneuvers and showed a decrease of postoperative pulmonary complications in abdominal surgery.

Thus, the realization of lung recruitment maneuvers, already used at the discretion of the practitioner, is now recommended by several teams of experts. The investigators propose in this "before-after" trial to evaluate variation in driving pressure due to systematic use of lung recruitment maneuvers, observed in patients operated in elective or urgent surgery. The secondary objective is to evaluate their impact on postoperative pulmonary complications.