Rapid Diagnostic Test for Sleeping Sickness

Abstract

In the United States, almost 800,000 patients who are hospitalized each year require mechanical ventilation.1 This estimate excludes neonates, and there is little doubt that mechanical ventilation will be increasingly used as the number of patients 65 years of age or older continues to increase.2,3 The majority of patients who receive mechanical ventilation have acute respiratory failure in the postoperative period, pneumonia, congestive heart failure, sepsis, trauma, or the acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS).4 Our discussion below assumes that physicians have addressed metabolic, inflammatory, and infectious conditions that may be present and have corrected them to the extent possible. . . .