Patients experiencing severe lung failure are put on specialist life support. They are very ill and have a complex range of lung problems.
There hasn’t been much research into this patient group yet. The NHS guidance for their treatment doesn’t include standards for physiotherapy.
Project aims
We will focus on airway clearance techniques to see how helpful they might be for people with severe lung failure. We will start by looking at the existing evidence on airway clearance for patients on specialist life support, to see if there are any gaps in the research.
This review will lead to some early-stage experimental research. We will focus on patient safety and how treatments are selected and timed.
What we hope to achieve
We hope this fellowship project, led by Thomas Lunn, will be an important step in developing innovative and evidence-based approaches to care for these patients, many of whom are still of working age.