Ventilation management is the ongoing process of adjusting ventilator support according to patients' needs. The present article is a review of the published work on the modeling of respiration physiology or the ventilation management process for supporting the critical task of ventilation. The focus of the survey is the application of soft computing--intelligent methods for the development of clinical decision support systems (CDSS). The necessity of CDSS in critical care and more specifically in ventilation management is discussed, and important characteristics are highlighted.