Gastrointestinal-Related Factors Associated with the Incidence of Ventilator-Associated Events (VAE) in ICU Patients on Mechanical Ventilation: A Scoping Review

Ventilator-associated events (VAE) — comprising VAC, IVAC, and PVAP as defined by the CDC NHSN 2013 criteria — represent a serious and underrecognised complication in adult ICU patients receiving invasive mechanical ventilation. Despite growing clinical interest in the role of the gastrointestinal system in VAE pathogenesis, no scoping review has exclusively mapped the primary evidence on gastrointestinal-related factors and their association with VAE incidence. This scoping review aims to systematically identify and map gastrointestinal-related factors reported to be associated with VAE in adult mechanically ventilated ICU patients, following the JBI scoping review framework (Peters et al., 2020) and reported in accordance with PRISMA 2020 and PRISMA-ScR (Tricco et al., 2018). Searches will be conducted in PubMed, Scopus, ScienceDirect, and Web of Science, covering primary studies published from January 2021 up to the date of search.