1st International Conference on Recent Advances in Anaesthesiology (INCRAA - 2009), 30 Jan – 01 Feb 2009 · Nehru Auditorium, AIIMS New Delhi

The Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) was first described in 1967 as severe respiratory failure accompanied by pulmonary infiltrates. The syndrome was diffuse and non-specific, occurring in a variety of clinical settings. Mechanical ventilation with positive end-expiratory pressure (PEEP) was invariably required, and carried a high mortality1. In 1994, the American-European Consensus Conference named ARDS as the Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome, and adopted the following clinical definition: acute onset of arterial hypoxemia (PaO2/FiO2 ratio, < 200 mg Hg) and bilateral infiltrates on radiography without evidence of left atrial hypertension or congestive heart failure (pulmonary…