Safety
and efficacy of tracheostomy in COVID-19 patients: a preliminary
retrospective study of 14 cases
Keypoints
- The outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, since December, 2019, has
become a pandemic.
- This highly infectious disease increases the risk of converting to
acute progressive respiratory failure, which needs the treatment with
invasive mechanical ventilation, including tracheostomy.
- Up to now, there is no data describing tracheostomy cases in COVID-19
pandemic.
- we retrospectively analyzed 14 cases of critically ill COVID-19
patients with tracheostomy, concentrating on surgical indication,
complication, procedure and precaution.
- Bedside open tracheostomy in COVID-19 patients is a relatively safe
procedure for skilled surgeons under appropriate precautions, and the
critically ill patients may benefit from it.
Introduction
The outbreak of Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has become a
pandemic. It has been reported that in an early study, about 20%
COVID-19 hospitalized patients developed into acute respiratory distress
syndrome (ARDS) and required invasive mechanical
ventilation.1 For some patients on prolonged
intubation, tracheostomy may be considered as an important option for
optimal respiratory care. Although recent several articles described the
principles and procedures of tracheostomy on COVID-19
patients,2,3 there is no data describing tracheostomy
cases in COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, we retrospectively analyzed
14 cases of
COVID-19
patients with tracheostomy in [removed for blind peer review], the
only designated hospital which still has a dozen intubated patients in
[removed for blind peer review], concentrating on surgical
indication, complication, procedure and precaution.