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Does my Mother Need a Tracheostomy After Only 3 Days of Ventilation in Intensive Care?
Hi, it’s Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com with another quick tip for families in intensive care. So, currently we are working with a client who has been told their 84-year-old mother needs a tracheostomy after Day 3 in ICU of mechanical ventilation with a pneumonia, and they have not been told any reason. They’ve just said, “well, the only way for your mother to survive is to do a tracheostomy”. And that’s only after Day 3.
Now, if you look at the research, a tracheostomy should be done after day 10 to 14 in intensive care. And obviously we advise the client to help us with access to the medical records and then we can advise once we have more access to the medical records.
But the reality is that, after Day 3 in ICU, it is way too early to talk about the tracheostomy. So it’s really all about changing the narrative. And the narrative needs to be from the family to the ICU. Can you show us that you are trying to wean my mom off the ventilator beyond the shadow of a doubt? That is a conversation that should take place here and not a conversation, whilst she needs to have a tracheostomy, that’s the only option after Day 3.
The biggest challenge for families in intensive care, simply that they don’t know what they don’t know. They don’t know what to look for, they don’t know what questions to ask, they don’t know their rights, and they don’t know how to manage doctors and nurses in intensive care. And this is exactly what we’re dealing with here. And thankfully the family found our website and is now finally asking the right question, thinking in their gut that something is not right here. That after day three they can only be a tracheostomy.
Once you present the intensive care teams with facts and with research, their narrative often crumbles. Yesterday I made a video about treatment options for kidney failure, all of a sudden when we advised the client what to ask for, all of a sudden hemofiltration was also an option after dialysis. The intensive care team never told them about it. In this situation, you need to ask the question, how will the intensive care team avoid the tracheostomy, and get their mother off the ventilator and the breathing tube to begin with.
Now I put a link below this video about how to wean a critically ill patient off the ventilator and the breathing tube. And there’s a step-by-step process how to do that. And you could follow that and if you are in a similar situation, you can just read the article or watch the video and you’ll have step by step advice and you can hold the intensive care team accountable. And that’s what it’s all about.
It’s about asking the right questions and holding intensive care teams accountable. Because if this lady ends up with a tracheostomy, she may need weeks or months to get off the ventilator and you’re trying to avoid that at all costs. And now is the time, after Day 3, to do that and not after Day 30. Now is the time because every day someone is in an induced coma and on a ventilator, there’s muscle wastage, there’s bodily deconditioning, and all of that will end up in a patient being ventilator-dependent for much longer than necessary.
So that is my quick tip for today.
If you have a loved one in intensive care and you need help in what questions to ask and how to hold intensive care teams accountable and get second opinions, go to intensivecarehotline.com and call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website or simply send us an email to [email protected].
Also, have a look at our membership for families in intensive care at intensivecaresupport.org. There you have access to me and my team 24-hours a day in a membership area and via email and we answer all questions intensive care related.
Also, if you need a medical record review contact us as well. We review medical records for patients in ICU while they’re in ICU in real time, so you can get a second opinion in real time. And we also review medical records after intensive care especially if you’re suspecting medical negligence.
Now, subscribe to my YouTube channel for regular updates for families in intensive care. Share the video with your friends and families. Click the notification bell, click the like button and comment below what you want to see next, or what questions and insights you have from this video.
Thanks for watching.
This is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com and I’ll talk to you in a few days.