Loading...
Patients who require prolonged mechanical ventilation often undergo tracheostomy to improve comfort and facilitate liberation from the ventilator. Once a patient can breathe unaided, the next step is removal of the tracheostomy tube, or decannulation. What is the best way to assess decannulation readiness?
Spanish investigators randomized 330 patients with tracheostomies who had been liberated from mechanical ventilation to two decannulation readiness assessment strategies. In the first, the patient underwent a trial of capping the tracheostomy for 24 hours once aspiration events were uncommon (i.e., 1 aspiration every 4 hours during a 12-hour period). In the other, the decision to decannulate was based on suctioning frequency (no more than …