Ventilator Failure Following Cardiopulmonary Bypass: A Case Report.

We present 3 cardiothoracic surgery cases during which the Drager Perseus A500 anesthesia machine and the iNOmax Delivery System were used concurrently, resulting in ventilator failures while attempting to separate from cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB). The failure was found to be caused by the iNOmax Delivery System sampling line, where negative pressure on the Perseus A500 breathing circuit precipitated a ventilator failure when the machine was brought out of "standby mode." To our knowledge, there is no discussion of this interaction in the literature, and we find this to be an important issue for patient safety during cardiothoracic surgery.