Current Practices in Home Mechanical Ventilation for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: A Real-Life Cross-Sectional Multicentric Study.

Patients were highly compliant with the therapy. In agreement with most recent studies and recommendations, there seems to be a move towards higher ventilation pressures, increased use of oronasal masks and an intent to obtain normocapnia. This study shows that chronic hypercapnic and post exacerbation patients do not differ significantly regarding patient characteristics, physiological parameters or ventilatory settings with one exception: chronic hypercapnic patients are more often obese and, subsequently, more frequently present OSA.