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Hi, it’s Patrik Hutzel from Intensivecarehotline.com with another quick tip for families in Intensive Care. Yesterday, Steve writes in and he says that his mom had a cardiac arrest after a pulmonary embolus and she probably sustained some hypoxic brain injury and Steve is saying that, they’re trying to wake her up.
So she’s in an induced coma she’s on a ventilator. The Intensive Care team is trying to wake her up and every time they’re waking up, she’s fighting against the ventilator and she’s having seizures. So now the Intensive Care team after two weeks of this sent an ultimatum to Steve and they say to him look Steve, we either have to take your mom off the ventilator and let her die or do a tracheostomy and sent her to a nursing home.
Now either of this option is not best practice. So what needs to happen in a situation like that is the seizures need to be controlled. That’s number one and that can often be done with anti-seizure medication. And then a tracheostomy can be done and that’s all fine. After two weeks of ventilation with the breathing tube, but then the next step is to gently wean your mother off the ventilator in intensive care not send her to a nursing home a good intensive care unit will do a tracheostomy and then gently wean your mother off the ventilator and that might take some time but we have published many case studies with our clients or we help them to keep the client in ICU after tracheostomy has been done and then they can be weaned gently over time. So go and look up our case studies so you can see how that can be done and whatever challenges you are facing with your loved one in intensive care.
We’re here to help. We have hundreds of case studies on our website and you can get one-on-one Consulting and advocacy. So go and check out our case studies at intensivecarehotline.com, and I’ll talk to you in a few days. Take care for now.