Evaluation of the Effect of a Speech Detection Tool on the Improvement of Phonation in Neuromuscular Patients Dependent on Mechanical Ventilation

Ventilation is a major treatment of respiratory failure due to neuromuscular disorders. First line treatment is noninvasive ventilation (NIV) but in some situations, especially in case of NIV inefficiency, invasive ventilation with tracheostomy (IVT) may be required. In both situations, patients may become dependent on ventilatory support with the disease evolution. Ventilation then can interfere speech and the quality of communication of the patients. Modification of the ventilation parameters may result in improved speech quality (for example, positive expiratory pressure (PEP) while not necessary for ventilation quality can dramatically improve speech in tracheostomized patients). Therefore, it would be of interest to allow patients to benefit from these specific parameters when they need to speak without maintaining them when patients are not speaking. We want to evaluate a specific ventilator feature which can detect speech and switch to specific ventilation parameters adapted for speech We believe that this feature will improve significantly speech quality in patients dependant either on NIV or IVT.