Copy-Paste Vent Settings: When to Match Sending Hospital Settings and When to Fix Them

Interfacility transports often start with a shrug and a copy-paste: “Just match whatever the sending vent is doing.” Sometimes that’s safe. Sometimes that’s how you inherit someone else’s disaster. This session tackles the tension between honoring continuity and honoring physiology. We’ll walk through when mirroring the sending ventilator makes sense—stable patients on lung-protective strategies with clear goals—and when transport teams should reassess, remeasure, and modify settings based on gas exchange, mechanics, and the realities of movement, altitude, and limited monitoring. Using case-based discussion, we’ll cover tidal volume and driving pressure targets, dead space and permissive hypercapnia, recruitment vs overdistention, and what to do when “home vent” settings don’t survive the ambulance or aircraft environment. Attendees will leave with a practical, defensible framework for deciding when to match, when to tweak, and how to communicate those decisions with sending and receiving teams without turning the handoff into a vent custody battle.