Heliox ventilation promotes pulmonary circulation and cardiac function in elderly hypertensive patients: a randomized controlled trial

JOURNAL/mgres/04.03/01612956-990000000-00070/figure1/v/2026-01-23T103412Z/r/image-tiff MPrevious studies have indicated that helium-oxygen mixture (heliox) ventilation could improve blood pressure and microcirculation in elderly hypertensive patients. To explore the advantages of heliox ventilation over conventional nitrogen-oxygen ventilation, a randomized controlled study was conducted from October 2020 to January 2023 in the Intensive Care Unit of Fujian Medical University Union Hospital and included 40 elderly hypertensive patients requiring invasive mechanical ventilation. These patients were randomly assigned to two groups: the heliox ventilation group (n = 20), which received a closed heliox ventilation protocol for 3 hours, and the nitrogen-oxygen ventilation group (n = 20), which received conventional nitrogen-oxygen ventilation. Compared with the nitrogen-oxygen group, the heliox group demonstrated significantly lower central venous pressure and higher central venous oxygen saturation, indicating increased cardiac output and elevated plasma nitric oxide. Moreover, in the heliox group, the change in plasma caveolin-1 was essentially identical to that in nitric oxide. However, there was no significant difference in endothelin-1 levels between the two groups. These findings indicate that heliox ventilation enhances cardiac function in elderly hypertensive patients by improving pulmonary circulation through increased pulmonary vasodilation. The trial was also registered in the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry (registration No. ChiCTR2100043945) on March 6, 2021.