Over the year post-implementation of the RT-driven
ventilator weaning protocol, 803 patients were admitted
and mechanically ventilated in our ICU. Of those patients,
651 (81.1%) required simple weaning, whereas 131 (16.3%)
and 1 (0.1%) were difficult and prolonged weaning cases,
respectively. Demographic information, APACHE II
scores, and ICU type are shown in Table 1. Among subjects
who required simple weaning, 514 (79.0%) were
weaned with the RT-driven protocol, whereas 137 (21.0%)
were liberated from the ventilator by physician orders. In
the group of subjects with difficult weaning,