Respiratory therapist — tasks, one by one

Managing ventilators and weaning

Closed-loop ventilators take over part of the adjusting: a 2025 Cochrane review found they probably shorten ventilation by 24% and reduce reintubation, and in a cardiac-surgery trial they needed fewer manual interventions per hour (0.7 vs 1.9) with the same number of alarms. But the largest trial, of 1,201 patients, found no gain in ventilator-free days, and clinicians still choose the mode, set the targets and decide.

Trials in European intensive care units where nurses were at the bedside; they do not measure how much of a respiratory therapist's shift this changes.

Airway care and breathing treatments

No record found shows machines doing airway care or bedside treatments; the work is hands-on and done at the patient's side.

The absence of a record; it does not rule out devices that change how treatments are given.

Assessing and monitoring patients

Monitoring is increasingly done with machines that watch continuously, while people interpret and respond: in the automated-ventilation trial alarms were as frequent as before, so someone still has to answer them.

Inferred from ventilation trials; no record measures how blood-gas or lung-function work is changing.

Home ventilation and chronic care

Follow-up is moving to remote monitoring with people in the loop: in a French trial of home non-invasive ventilation, an algorithm raised alerts from ventilator data and specialised nurses handled them and taught patients, and blood carbon dioxide was lower than with usual follow-up.

One small trial in one country, staffed by nurses; it does not show who does this work in the US.