RESPIRATORY CONSULTANT - A HAND-HELD COMPUTER-BASED SYSTEM FOR OXYGEN-THERAPY AND CRITICAL CARE MEDICINE

The assessment of respiratory system performance may involve issues su ch as pulmonary gas exchange, respiratory mechanics, oxygen transport and other factors. This paper describes an MS-DOS program called Respi ratory Consultant that was designed for use with a hand-held MS-DOS co mputer, but can also run under Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 if desired. Respiratory Consultant performs a number of computational tasks potent ially appropriate to respiratory care in the ICU and elsewhere. These include: predicted arterial oxygen tension from age, interconversion o f oxygen tension and saturation, calculation of gas exchange indices a nd oxygen transport parameters, dead-space estimation, and pulmonary f unction test interpretation. Respiratory Consultant is freeware that w ill run easily on most IBM-compatible PCs and may be downloaded from t he Internet.