Fig. 2

Distribution of tidal volume vs. plateau pressure (A), driving pressure (B), and compliance (C) for each patient on the first 24 h of ICU admission. Protective levels of ventilation, defined as tidal volume of ≤8 mL/kg of ideal body weight and plateau pressure ≤ 30 cmH₂O, were applied to 82% of patients (lower left quadrant in panel A), and the combination of high plateau pressure (> 30 cmH₂O) and high tidal volume (> 8 mL/kg) was rare (upper right quadrant in A). Using a threshold of driving pressure of < 16 cmH₂O, 69% were ventilated within protective levels (lower left quadrant in B). We added subcentimetric random variability in B (driving pressure) to avoid overlapping of several points over the same value using the function geom_jitter, on the statistical program R