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Hi, it’s Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com with another quick tip for families in intensive care.

So we’re working with a client at the moment who has their mother in ICU with a breathing tube and on mechanical ventilation after cardiac arrest. Now, it looks like our client’s mother is coming close to having the breathing tube removed. She’s slowly waking up, she’s breathing on CPAP, she’s passing the spontaneous breathing trials, x-ray seems to be clear, arterial blood gases seem to be clear.

So she’s coming closer to being weaned off, to being extubated and having the breathing tube removed. There’s just one caveat. She’s got airway swelling and airway swelling basically means even though she can breathe spontaneously, as soon as the breathing tube comes out, the airway swells and somebody can’t breathe and they have to have the breathing tube either reinserted, which could be very difficult because of the swelling or number two, they have to have a tracheostomy because that would bypass the airway swelling.

So when there is airway swelling and the breathing tube can’t be removed, you need to look at treatment options such as steroids, like dexamethasone or methylprednisone and also adrenaline nebulizers or epinephrine nebulizers, that might help.

But if that all doesn’t help, the next step really is to do a tracheostomy, especially if your loved one has been ventilated for over two weeks. And once the breathing tube is out and the tracheostomy is in, then the swelling would probably naturally go down because the swelling is most likely a result of the irritation of the breathing tube in the back of the throat.

So that’s my quick tip for today.

This is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com. If you have a loved one in intensive care and you need help, check out intensivecarehotline.com. Send me an email to [email protected] or call us on one of the numbers on the top of the website.

Like this video, comment down below what questions you have and like my YouTube channel. Take care.