What is the Quality of Life After a Tracheostomy?

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What is the Quality of Life After a Tracheostomy?

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In this week’s blog I want to answer a question that we get quite frequently from our readers and people who visit our website INTENSIVECAREATHOME.COM and they simply want to know the options once their loved one in Intensive Care will need a tracheostomy.

Many families who have a loved one in Intensive Care come to us and they want to know

What is the quality of life after a tracheostomy?

It’s another great question we get rather frequently from our readers at INTENSIVE CARE AT HOME and I do want to shed some light on this question today.

Most families who have a loved one in Intensive Care and ask this question should also ask a different question to begin with to set the frame.

Is there quality of life in Intensive Care?

The answer is no, therefore let’s look at some explanations and let’s look at the bigger picture.

One of the biggest frustrations for families in Intensive Care is simply that they don’t know if a tracheostomy is the right thing to do if their critically ill loved one is on a breathing tube and a ventilator and can’t be weaned off it.

From my experience Intensive Care Units can be very quick to either

- If you are in countries like the Australia, New Zealand, UK or Ireland a tracheostomy should ideally lead to weaning off the ventilator in Intensive Care as opposed to long-term acute care

- wanting to do a tracheostomy and then send their Patients off to Long-term acute care (LTAC) if you are living in the USA. This often serves an Intensive Care Unit because they can free up a precious, expensive, scarce and “in-demand” Intensive Care bed, without actually maximizing and optimizing chances to get your critically ill loved one off the ventilator and the breathing tube in the first place. Getting a critically ill Patient off the ventilator and the breathing tube should always be the goal.
This is really important for you and your family to understand before I explain to you if there is quality of life with a tracheostomy.

Generally speaking, quality of life after a tracheostomy is improved in Intensive Care, because the need for sedation and induced coma is often minimized and/or excluded.

You may also be curious about why I should be the one answering this question for you.

In case you are wondering, after nearly 20 years Intensive Care Nursing in three different countries, where I literally worked with thousands of critically ill Patients and their families and where I also worked as a Nurse Unit Manager in Intensive Care for over 5 years I can assure that I’ve seen enough Patients in Intensive Care getting a tracheostomy.

I have also worked in the community with dozens of long-term Intensive Care Patients (adults & children) on ventilators with tracheostomies as part of INTENSIVE CARE AT HOME...

Continue reading at: https://intensivecareathome.com/quality-life-tracheostomy/