5 Things ICU’s Won’t Tell You About Tracheostomies! Quick Tip for Families in Intensive Care!

Five things ICUs won’t tell you about tracheostomies. That’s what I’m going to talk about today.

My name is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com, and this is another quick tip for families in intensive care.

Here at intensivecarehotline.com, we instantly improve the lives of families of critically ill patients in intensive care, so that you can make informed decisions, have peace of mind, control, power and influence, even if you’re not a doctor or a nurse in intensive care.

Again, today, we talk about the five things that ICUs won’t tell you about tracheostomies. Let me be broadly honest with you here. ICU teams often push families into making rush decisions about tracheostomies without giving them the full picture. If you’re not asking the right questions, you’ll be left making critical life or death decisions in the dark.

So, what is it they’re not telling you?

Number 1. Tracheostomy is not the end; it’s a new beginning. When your loved one can’t be weaned off the ventilator and the breathing tube, the ICU will often recommend a tracheostomy after 10 to 14 days of mechanical ventilation with a breathing tube. They often say that it’s the next step or that it’ll make things easier.

But here is what they don’t say, the tracheostomy can often buy time, but it also prolongs the ICU journey, potentially shifting your loved one to long term care or LTAC (long-term acute care) if you’re in the United States, which often provides substandard care compared to ICU.

Another option can be to go home with Intensive Care at Home. You can find more information at intensivecareathome.com. But the reality also is that it is a fork in the road, and if you take the wrong turn, the loved one might never return to a quality of life that is acceptable to you and your family.

Number 2. They don’t tell you how hard it may be to reverse. They’ll tell you we can take the tracheostomy out later, but sometimes they don’t. Why? Because once the ICU hands your loved one over to a step-down unit or to an LTAC, again, LTACs are only for our viewers in the United States, the weaning process often stalls. You need to insist on a clear weaning plan before the tracheostomy is even done. This is really where the rubber hits the road.

What is the plan to avoid the tracheostomy? What is the plan for getting your loved one off the ventilator and avoid the tracheostomy at all costs? What are their sedation goals? What sedation is your loved one on? What opiates is your loved one on? Because being on sedation and opiates, that can stall ventilation weaning.

Is your loved one on pressure support ventilation already, which means is your loved one having spontaneous breathing trials already? If they cannot give you clear answers, they’re probably just trying to move your loved one out of ICU, not necessarily improve the outcome.

Again, there are differences between different countries, I would say this. In the United States,