Objective:In mass crisis setting such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of patients requiring invasive ventilation may exceed the number of available ventilators. This challenge led to the concept of splitting ventilator between several patients, which aroused interest as well as a strong opposition from multiple professional societies (The joint statement) 1 .Establishment of a safe ventilator splitting setup which enables monitoring and control of each ventilated patient would be a desirable ability. Achieving independency between the Co-vent patients would enable effective coping with different individual clinical scenarios and broaden the pairing possibilities of patients connected to a single ventilator. We conducted an experiment to determine if our designed setup achieves these goals. Methods:We utilized a double two limbed modified ventilator circuits which were connected to dual lung simulators. Adding readily available pressure sensors (transducers), PEEP valves, flow control valves, one-way (check) valves and HME filters made the circuit safe enough and suitable for our goals. We first examined a single lung simulator establishing the baseline set parameters, while monitoring ventilator measures as Tidal Volume. The initial ventilator setting we chose was a controlled mandatory ventilation mode with a PIP (peak inspiratory pressure) of 25cmH2O, PEEP (Positive End Expiratory Pressure) of 5 cmH2O. In pressure control set at 20 cmH2O, the recorded mean TV( tidal volume) was 1000 mL (approximately 500 mL/lung simulator) with an average MV(minute ventilation) of 13 L/min (or 6.5 L/min/lung simulator). After examining the system with the dual modified circuits attached, and obtaining all the ventilation parameters, we simulated several clinical scenarios. We simulated clinical events such as: partial or full obstruction, disconnection, air leak and compliance differentials, which occur frequently on a ventilation course. Thus, it is a paramount system demand to keep undisturbed ventilation to the Co-vent patient A, while being challenged by patient B.

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