Turning the mass-spectrometer into an easy to handle clinical instrument for routine multipatient surveillance of respiratory and anesthetic gases during anesthesia.
Although most authors use it as the reference instrument for respiratory gases measurement, the use of mass-spectrometer in clinical routine in ICU and in anesthesia remains quite limited. We developed a fully automatically controlled system, carrying on a twinned goal: The ACS-2000 (Automatic Calibration System) turns the Airspec MGA-2000 mass-spectrometer into a true clinical instrument, as easy to use as any routine monitoring instrument, and lets the clinician and the anesthetist benefit from its uncomparable metrological performances. PAMS-M, multibed monitoring system, shares the mass-spectrometer time among 4 to 8 rooms, providing each anesthetist with full composition of inspired and end tidal gases composition, trend evolution of those data, as with the display of capnogram. Each room is equipped with an IBM PC compatible intelligent terminal, abling the user to select the nature of the displayed information and enter into an easy menu driven dialog with the system. As a subproduct, the informatic infrastructure on which the system is based allowed, beyond the standard monitoring function, to set the bases of a computerized patient's anesthesia or respiratory monitoring report.