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

So, today’s tip is about, “Weaning off ventilation and tracheostomy with COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) in intensive care.” So, I have an email from a reader who says, “My mom has been in ICU now for three months with COPD on ventilation with tracheostomy, and she can’t be weaned off the ventilator, should she go home with Intensive Care at Home?” So, what should you be doing in a situation like that? Well, three months in ICU is a long time, and I would imagine your mom doesn’t have any quality of life. And therefore, the only way really to improve her quality of life is either to wean her off the ventilator, get her out of ICU as quickly as possible, go onto rehabilitation. If that can’t be achieved for whatever reason, you got asked the question, “Should she go home with Intensive Care at Home?”

So, for example, the first question that you should be asking is, is she getting mobilized? What’s stopping her from weaning off the ventilator? Is it high CO2 (carbon dioxide) with COPD? Is it that she can’t get mobilized and she can’t strengthen her breathing muscles because of it? So, you haven’t given me enough information in order to guide you there. And that’s just a tip, when you write into us, give us as much information as possible.

And it comes back to what I’ve been saying over and over again, 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. That’s one of your challenges here that you’re only telling us half of the story, but nevertheless, let’s go with what we know and that is that your mom can’t be weaned off the ventilator with COPD.

So, have they tried a weaning protocol? If they have, have they implemented properly? What’s stopping her? Is she sleeping during at night and awake during the day? Is she getting enough rest at night? There are all these issues that need to be looked at weaning someone off a ventilator as a bit of an art rather than a science. You need to get it right and you need to do the daily grind, so to speak, daily breathing exercises, daily physiotherapy, and only then can you gradually wean your mom off the ventilator.

But if all of that fails, yes, of course Intensive Care at Home is there. We can help you with Intensive Care at Home. Go and check out intensivecareathome.com. There, we take patients home from intensive care, adults and children with ventilation and tracheostomy, improving their quality of life, and in some instances, quality of end of life rather than people staying in intensive care for months or weeks on ends. There’s no end, there is no need for that because we bring intensive care into your home.

We are predominantly operating at the moment in Australia, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, but also Adelaide and Perth, and you should contact us if you are in Australia, you haven’t actually shared your location, well, you should call contact us. We can help you with setting it up, providing the service, of course. We can help you with the funding. Bear in mind, with saving healthcare funding agencies, 50% of the cost of an intensive care bed, it’s a win-win situation. And your mom will have quality of life at home, which is most important.

And if you are in another country, you should contact us as well. We can probably help you setting you up with someone in another country like the U.S. or in the U.K., contact us as well.

That is my quick tip for today.

If you have a loved one in intensive care, 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].

And if you have a loved one in intensive care and you want to go home, go to intensivecareathome.com and call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website there as well, or 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, and we answer questions, all intensive care related, 24 hours a day, in a membership area and via email.

If you need a medical record review while your loved one is in intensive care, or if you want it after intensive care, please contact us as well. We review medical records in real time. In this day and age, the hospital should just give you access to a website with a username and a password, and we can look up the medical records there and help you interpret clinical data in real time.

Subscribe to my YouTube channel  for regular updates for families in intensive care and Intensive Care at Home, share the video with your friends and families, give it a thumbs up, give it a like, and click the notification bell, 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 Intensive Care Hotline and Intensive Care at Home, and I’ll talk to you in a few days.