CPAP... Bi-PAP... Ventillator... what's the difference?

[thx1138]

As far as I can tell, there are 3 levels of machine:
- CPAP (which I have)
- Bi-PAP
- Ventilator

(all require prescription) My CPAP certainly puts your intake air into you through a mask at a certain pressure (up to like "20 inches of water" whatever that is in PSI). And it has a feature called "when you sense that I'm exhaling, back off on the pressure". But it only backs off up to 3 "inches of water" in pressure.

So I suspect that a Bi-PAP, gets rid of this limit of 3, and goes to zero, maybe even negative and sucks(?), when detecting exhale.

What a ventilator does above and beyond that I'm not sure. Mine does even have a port to introduce pure oxygen (not that I have any laying around). I've read that proper full ventilator is so disturbing, that they tranquilize you out, so the machine can just force the air in and out.

All this to say, how helpful are these, if say, there's no hospital beds or ventilators (In Italy now, if you're over 60, they triage you and bring a priest instead of a ventilator) and I've got Covid-19, and my pulse oximeter says I'm low on oxygen?

Is it easy to feed oxygen in, I think my heated hose has an input for some kind of oxygen. Though I've read that the cheap Chinese (but I repeat myself) "oxygen generators", when you go over 1 liter per minute, say sure, and just add air, not oxygen.

[Pugsy]

It's not inches to water it's centimeters.

So I suspect that a Bi-PAP, gets rid of this limit of 3, and goes to zero, maybe even negative and sucks(?), when detecting exhale.

No...bilevel can't do negative pressures so it won't suck anything...it can't. It can have pressure support (difference between inhale and exhale) set at zero but when that is done the machine is no longer a bilevel machine and is functioning like a regular cpap/apap without any exhale relief.

CPAP/APAP/regular bilevels that are essentially cpap/apap machines that can offer more than 3 cm pressure support.....
They will not force you to breathe....you have to still be able to breathe and the pressure hold the airway open so the airway tissues don't collapse. They can't force you to breathe.

Ventilators....whole different kind of machine and they can actually force you to breathe if you don't breathe on your own.
There are invasive ventilators in which you get a tube stuck in your trachea and that tube is attached to the ventilator and it can force your to breathe.

Some bilevel machines can work as what is called a non invasive ventilator...no tube in the trachea....no surgery....surgery is the invasive part which you have to have to get the tube in the trachea.
Not all bilevel machines are able to be a non invasive ventilator and breathe for a person.

BTW....BiPap is a marketing trademark term for bilevel machines made by Respironics. It has sort of become an industry generic term but that is not actually what it is. Several other companies make bilevel pressure machines and they are named all sorts of things.
BiPap itself...is only a Respironics machine.

[jnk...]

A link in support of Pugsy's well-stated points:

https://aeroflowinc.com/need-ventilator ... ipap-cpap/

[palerider]

What's the difference?
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/25/ventila ... they-work/

[zonker]

What's the difference?
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/25/ventila ... they-work/

as i said when you posted this in another thread, this is good stuff!

learned a lot and thanks for posting.

[chunkyfrog]

Funny how those who know the least get these awesome ideas--
possible only in SCIENCE FICTION.
Maybe we can simply transport all the viruses into the sun . . .
"Hollywood can do the audio and the video--how can it not work?"