Disabling apnea volume software

摘要

A system for allowing a user to disable an apnea alarm in an anesthesia system when the anesthesia ventilator is in the mechanical ventilation mode. The system takes advantage of the redundancy of both a CO2 monitor and a volume monitor triggering the apnea alarm based upon a predetermined fault condition. The inventive system allows the user to disable the apnea alarm based upon a signal from the volume monitor to alleviate the problem of spurious alarm signals from the volume monitor. The attempt to disable the volume monitor fault signal to the apnea alarm is prevented, however, without a system check by a CPU to insure that the CO2 monitor is, in fact, fully operational and capable of sending its fault signal to the apnea alarm to trigger that alarm. The system continuously checks the CO2 monitor and immediately restores the viability of the volume monitor as a trigger for the apnea alarm at any time the CO2 monitor becomes disabled and is unable to trigger the apnea alarm itself. Thus the volume monitor based apnea alarm may be disabled by the user without compromising the alarm function of the overall anesthesia system.