PreVent

VUMC study finds helping patients breathe during intubation prevents life-threatening complications

Thousands of Americans die each year during a dangerous two-minute procedure to insert a breathing tube. Now a Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) study in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) is showing that using bag-mask ventilation, squeezing air from a bag into the mouth for 60 seconds to help patients’ breathing, improves outcomes and could potentially save lives.