Reply to: 464-616: Re: Pressure-controlled versus volume-controlled ventilation during one-lung ventilation in the prone position for robot-assisted esophagectomy

摘要

We appreciate the constructive comments by Dr. R. J. J. Verhage and colleagues regarding our study. They raised the issue of whether any statistical differences between the two groups were found with respect to intraoperative data and postoperative clinical outcomes.We agree with the comment that our study would have been of greater clinical interest if we had compared the postoperative outcomes of the different ventilation strategies. However, because the primary end point of our study was a comparison between the effects of pressure-controlled ventilation (PCV) and those of volume-controlled ventilation (VCV) during one-lung ventilation with the patients in the prone position for robot-assisted esophagectomy, we used a crossover design, which provides adequate statistical power with fewer patients. Regrettably, the crossover design does not permit such comparisons because VCV and PCV both were performed for each patient in random order. Therefore, our postoperative data on the incidences of pulmonary morbidities such as pneumonia and respiratory compromises were merely observational data without intergroup comparison. Additional operative and postoperative data are listed in Table 1.