Ventilation Strategy During General Anesthesia for Orthopedic Surgery: A Quality Improvement Project

This is a non-randomized alternating intervention cohort study in which all orthopedic surgery operating rooms will alternate amongst four designated ventilation settings which include two tidal volumes and two PEEP levels. At the end of the four-week sequence, the entire sequence will be repeated 26 times over a 2-year period. Thus, ventilator settings will not be randomized on a per-patient basis, or even among study weeks. Ventilation parameters will be designated at the beginning of each study week. However, clinicians will be free to adjust to whatever ventilation settings they believe is optimal in individual patients to ensure oxygenation and patient safety.