Pombo NA, Barrios MI, Ortega BJM, Calderón WÓ, Becerril RPB

Language: Spanish
References: 6
Page: 96-100
PDF size: 537.07 Kb.

ABSTRACT

Background: Orotracheal intubation is a routine procedure to assure the airway. Complications after orotracheal intubation are widely recognized; they affect 4-13% of cases.
Objective: To assess, in the period immediate to extubation, the airway of adult patients from the Intensive Therapy service, who were intubated.
Patients and methods: In the Intensive Therapy service a prospective study was done assessing –during the first 12 hours after extubation by rigid or flexible laryngoscopy– patients who required orotracheal intubation. Findings were described by a data capture form.
Results: Thirty patients were evaluated, 11 patients had pneumonia; 5, diabetes mellitus; 4, high blood pressure and 2, sepsis. Orotracheal intubation lasted a mean of 14.3 days. Flexible laryngoscopy was used in 21 patients; in 22 patients tracheotomy was done due to prolonged intubation. The most affected region was the supraglotic one (21 patients), although this was transitory in all cases and was resolved with conservative measures. Four patients had vocal cord paresis; two, vocal cord paralysis and one, vocal process granuloma. Only one patient had subglotic affection due to postintubation stenosis with light of 15%.
Conclusions: Laryngoscopy should be done to all patients submitted to intubation in the first hours postextubation, this will make easy an early diagnosis of laryngeal lesions and, thus, an opportune treatment and less functional sequelae for patients.

REFERENCES

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