A method for automated detection of water accumulation in a ventilator, comprising: (i) a plurality of iterations of: calculating an airway pressure water accumulation index; calculating a flow water accumulation index; labeling, using a trained asynchrony detection algorithm, the single breath of the patient as synchronous or asynchronous, and ranking all of the input features based on an importance of each respective input feature to the synchronous or asynchronous determination; (ii) for the plurality of iterations; determining, a most frequent breath labeling, a most frequent most important input feature, and a most frequent most important input feature for each type of breath; and determining one or more of: (1) water accumulation and an action to remove the water accumulation; and (2) asynchrony due to a cause other than water accumulation, and an action to correct the asynchrony; and (iii) notifying a user of the determined action.