If a patient’s pre-ICU chest X-ray shows opacities in both lungs, but their ICU chest X-ray shows improvement, should they still be recruited?

Patients must meet all three ARDS criteria within the same 24-hour period to be eligible for recruitment. If a patient meets one criterion but subsequently no longer meets it, they will not be eligible if the other criteria have not also been met within that 24-hour period. Therefore, the patient’s eligibility depends on whether all three ARDS criteria were met within the required timeframe, rather than the X-ray findings alone.