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Quick Tip for Families in Intensive Care: Father-in-Law is Having Trouble Weaning Off ofVentilator/Breathing Tube & Induced Coma (9 Days)!

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

So, I’ve got a brief email from Scott, and Scott says, “My father has been in ICU for nine days. He’s having difficulties coming off the ventilator and the breathing tube, and he’s been in an induced coma for nine days. What should be the next steps?” Well, that’s a great question. Unfortunately, Scott, you haven’t shared with me why your father is actually in ICU and why your father is on a ventilator with a breathing tube, which comes back to that the biggest challenge for families in intensive care is 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 by your brief message and trying to find answers, we are just scratching the surface with your question. In order to answer your question, I would need to know why is your father in ICU? Why is he in an induced coma? What medications is he on? Does he have a brain injury? Does he have multi-organ failure? Does he have a pneumonia? Has he had a traumatic accident? And the list goes on. What are his blood results? What are his arterial blood gases? What are his ventilator settings? And the list goes on and is endless. The devil is in the detail, but I’ll try to give you a general answer here what should be happening next.

Well, they should be taking him out of the induced coma and see whether he’s waking up or not. That is, assuming he doesn’t have a brain injury, or he is not bleeding. If he has, for example, a traumatic brain injury, his ICPs (intracranial pressure) might be very high, and therefore, it might be difficult to wake him up. But if they can wake him up and if he is waking up, then he should breathe up and he should be able to be weaned off the ventilator, assuming his brain is intact once again.

If for whatever reason he’s not waking up or they need to keep him in the induced coma for whatever reason, because again, maybe he’s very unstable, maybe he’s bleeding, he’s got brain injury, he’s got a severe pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, whatever the case may be. And the next step might be a tracheostomy, and a tracheostomy in ICU should be done according to the literature around day 10 to 14 of inability to wean off the ventilator. But then again, it is also a case-by-case basis. Let’s just say, your dad will wake up day 12. You probably shouldn’t do a tracheostomy; the goal should be to wean him off the ventilator then.

So, that is my quick tip for today.

I hope that helps and answers your question. But again, any family who’s coming to us, the more information you can give us, the better we can answer your question, because we got to piece together a very complex puzzle. When someone is in intensive care, the devil is in the detail.

So, if you have a loved one in intensive care, go to intensivecarehotline.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of our 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, and we answer all questions intensive care related.

Also, if you need a medical record review for your loved one in intensive care, we can help you with that. Contact us for a medical record review especially in a situation like this where Scott asks that question, we could absolutely answer your question in much more detail because we could see what’s really happening. It’s almost like we’re providing a second opinion in real time when we review medical records. But we also review medical records after intensive care if you have unanswered questions, if you need closure, or if you’re simply suspecting medical negligence.

Now, subscribe to my YouTube channel for regular updates for families in intensive care, click the like button, click the notification bell, share the video with your friends and families, 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.