BACKGROUND A study was undertaken to determine the oropharyngeal carrier state of potentially pathogenic microorganisms (PPM) and the magnitude of colonisation and infection rates of the lower airways with these PPM in children requiring long term ventilation first transtracheally and afterwards via a tracheotomy. METHODS A 5 year, prospective, observational cohort study was undertaken in 45 ...

OBJECTIVE To determine the appropriateness of postoperative chest radiography after adult tracheotomy. DESIGN Retrospective case series. SETTING Tertiary care academic medical center. PATIENTS The records of 379 consecutive adult patients who underwent tracheotomy by the Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery Service from January 1992 to December 1996 were available for review and met inclu...

Tracheotomy is commonly performed in ventilator-dependent patients. Disadvantages to the procedure are perioperative complications, long-term airway injury, and the cost of the procedure. Benefits ascribed to tracheotomy vs prolonged translaryngeal intubation include improved patient comfort, more effective airway suctioning, decreased airway resistance, enhanced patient mobility, increased pot...

Since the 1970s, different comparative studies have tried to answer this question. The two randomized, prospective multicenter trials with the largest sample size to date have been published during the last 5 years. In the first of them, Terragni et al. included 419 patients, of which 209 were randomized to early tracheotomy (after 6--8 days of translaryngeal intubation [TI]) and 210 to late tr...

Introduction. The contribution of tracheotomy in comparison to intubation in patients on the resuscitation ward is debated. The main purpose of our study is to assess if tracheotomy compared to prolonged intubation, reduces the whole duration of ventilation, the frequency of nosocomial pneumopathy, the mean duration of hospitalisation in the resuscitation ward and mortality. Patients and method...

Syndromic craniosynostosis is associated with a high rate of respiratory difficulty, due mainly to midfacial hypoplasia. Nasopharyngeal airway establishment has been reported as the first-line approach to airway obstruction and may obviate the need for a highly invasive tracheotomy. No previous studies have compared airway obstruction status in syndromic craniosynostosis between cases requiring...

BACKGROUND Home tracheotomy mechanical ventilation (HTMV) can prolong survival in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) when non-invasive ventilation (NIV) fails, but knowledge about HTMV is scarce. The aim of this study was to determine the causes of tracheotomy and the main issues of 1-year HTMV in a cohort of patients with ALS. METHODS A prospective study of all patients needin...

OBJECTIVE To compare the effect of early tracheotomy (ET) and late tracheotomy (LT) on ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) incidence and short-term mortality in critically ill patients who received mechanical ventilation. DATA SOURCES We searched databases of PubMed, Embase, and others for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that compared ET (≤ 8 days after admission to the intensive care u...

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to present our findings on the impact of the Blom tracheotomy tube with speech inner cannula on voice production abilities and speech intelligibility scores of ventilator-dependent patients requiring a fully inflated tracheotomy tube cuff. METHODS Prospective single group case-series design permitted consecutive accrual of 23 adult inpatients from acut...

A tracheotomy tube, as well as the stoma through which it is inserted into the patient's throat, may represent a potential risk of fungal infections for patients suffering from larynx cancer. The study was aimed at evaluating the influence of the hospital room environment on the fungal colonisation of tracheotomy tubes in the case of patients diagnosed with larynx cancer and operated on in the ...