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

So I had a question yesterday from Colleen and Colleen writes, “When does the ICU team know when to remove or pull out the breathing tube or endotracheal tube when someone is in an induced coma?”

Now, what a great question, Colleen, and I’ll quickly shine light on that. So number one, when someone is in an induced coma, you can’t remove the breathing tube. So that’s number one because when somebody is in an induced coma, they can’t breathe by themselves, hence the breathing tube and mechanical ventilation is needed. So, the first thing that needs to happen is that your loved one needs to come out of the induced coma and the sedation needs to be weaned off and only then can an assessment be made about whether a breathing tube or an endotracheal tube can be removed.

And I have written a whole article about that, how to wean a critically ill patient off the ventilator and the breathing tube that I put below this video. So, you actually can look at that article because that actually explains in detail how to wean a critically ill patient off the ventilator and the breathing tube and also get them out of an induced coma because that needs to be number one before you can even make an assessment, whether someone can be weaned off the breathing tube and the endotracheal tube and that’s also called extubation.

So, that’s my quick tip for today.

Look at the article and the video below and then you can get all of the answers from there.

This is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com. Thanks for watching, like the video, comment down below what you want to see next and subscribe to my channel and if you need help, if you have a loved one in intensive care, contact us at intensivecarehotline.com.