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Hi, it’s Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com with another quick tip for families in intensive care.
Today, I had a question from one of our readers and the question was, when somebody’s having a tracheostomy, can you immediately take them off the ventilator? So the answer to that question is really that it depends. So if your loved one is on a breathing tube, and on a ventilator and is awake but needs a tracheostomy because they still can’t be weaned off the ventilator completely. The answer is most likely you can put a tracheostomy shield or an oxygen mask on straight away. It really depends on the ventilator settings depends on why a loved one is in ICU.
So I’d say it’s probably from my experience sort of you know forty percent chance that your loved one can go on a tracheostomy hood or an oxygen mask straight away and there’s a 60% chance that your loved one, you know will still continue on the ventilator until they’re more awake. But the good news is once your loved one has a tracheostomy sedation and opiates can be minimized or even switched off completely again it depends on the situation.
So the best next step for you is to go on our website intensivecarehotline.com and use our search tool bar and type in tracheostomy because they get a number of articles and case studies that explain this topic in more detail.
Take care for now. This is Patrick Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com, and I’ll talk to you in a few days.