Case study: apnoea post cardiac arrest

You are called to see a patient who has had a cardiac arrest and was successfully resuscitated and is the intensive care unit in a "coma". The patient is not on a ventilator and is breathing spontaneously. You notice that the patient has periods of apnoea. The following is a trace of the patient's breathing pattern:

Questions:

Level 1:

How do you define apnoea?

Level 2:

What is this pattern or breathing called?

What is the prognostic significance of this breathing pattern?

How does it differ from Cheyne-Stokes respiration?

Answers