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

Today’s tip is about, “My sister is not waking up after her sedation has been removed after weeks of having it. Today, it has been stopped. How long should I expect my sister to wake up?” What a great question to ask and the answer is that it really depends.

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 we see that over and over again.

So, how long will it take for your sister to wake up after weeks of having been on sedation, opiates, and in an induced coma? Again, it really depends. Depends how many sedatives your sister had, what sedatives your sister had, how many opiates your sister had, such as fentanyl or morphine. One of the challenges that you might now encounter is that she’s going through withdrawal because some sedatives, such as midazolam or Versed, are addictive in nature. The same with morphine and fentanyl. Opiates are addictive in nature. So therefore, one of the next steps might be for your sister to go through a withdrawal.

Other questions that need to be answered are, has your sister, for example, been on paralysis? Has she been chemically paralyzed by paralyzing agents because maybe your sister was proned? You haven’t given us any insights why your sister is in ICU and that’s why this is such a broad but also important question. And that it all depends on what’s exactly happening. If your sister, for example, has ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome) or pneumonia and has been proned and there’s a high chance she was paralyzed, and that will delay the waking up process from my experience. Also, your sister might have a brain injury or a head injury. You haven’t shared that. That will probably delay the waking up process as well. Age is often also delaying the waking up process. So, the younger person, generally speaking, the quicker they are to wake up after an induced coma.

Other issues are, can your sister have physical therapy? Can she get mobilized? Those are important issues as well because if she doesn’t get mobilized, again, there’s probably going to be a delay in waking up. It really all depends. And if she’s been in an induced coma for many weeks, for example, and she’s not making up, and there hasn’t been a brain injury, God forbid, did she have a stroke? If she had a stroke, is there some neurological deficit?

So, I have written blog posts and books about it, e-books about it, “How long does it take to wake up after an induced coma?” We link towards those e-books below this video so you can have more insights. I’ve made YouTube lives about this topic. There are other resources you can access as well in order to find the answer.

But if you have a loved one in intensive care and you need help, go to intensivecarehotline.com. Call us on one of the 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.

If you want the medical record review, you can contact us as well. We review medical records while your loved one is in ICU or after ICU, especially if you have concerns around medical negligence, we can help you find answers there as well.

And, subscribe to my YouTube channel for regular updates for families in intensive care, click the like button, share the video with your friends and families, 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 intensivecarehotline.com and I will talk to you in a few days.