A 65-year-old man with cT3N2M0 stage III cervical esophageal cancer underwent subtotal esophagectomy and gastric tube reconstruction through the retrosternal route after neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy. The anastomosis was located adjacent to the left side of the trachea, and a circular stapler was used for anastomosis. Postoperative anastomotic leakage occurred, and an esophagotracheal fistula b...

Critically ill patients, who develop ventilator-associated pneumonia during prolonged mechanical ventilation, often require antimicrobial agents administered through the endotracheal or the tracheotomy tube. The delivery of antibiotics via the respiratory tract has been established over the past years as an alternative route in order to deliver high concentrations of antimicrobial agents direct...

Since the 1970s, different comparative studies have tried to answer this question. The two randomized, prospective multicenter trials with the largest sample size to date have been published during the last 5 years. In the first of them, Terragni et al. included 419 patients, of which 209 were randomized to early tracheotomy (after 6--8 days of translaryngeal intubation [TI]) and 210 to late tr...

BACKGROUND We aimed to describe our experience with transoral robotic-assisted supraglottic laryngectomy. METHODS We retrospectively reviewed the records of patients who underwent transoral robotic-assisted supraglottic laryngectomy at our institution between May 2007 and November 2008. RESULTS During the study period, 7 patients with malignancy underwent the procedure (4 men, 3 women; aver...

Objective: To study the effects of 20 ppm inhaled nitric oxide (iNO) on haemodynamics and systemic oxygenation during one-lung ventilation (OLV) in vivo. Design: Prospective animal study with a cross-over design. Setting: Animal laboratory of a university hospital. Subjects: Eight female pigs. Outcome measures: The pigs were anaesthetized, tracheally intubated, and mechanically ventilated. Foll...

In 1952, Bjork created an inferior based tracheal flap through 2nd, 3rd and 4th tracheal ring which was later fixed to skin to secure the lumen of a tracheotomy tube. [1] Following this Bjork flap, many studies came which cited various complications or drawbacks for this flap. However, various studies have also reported no added risk and absence of complications associated with this. A recent g...

Introduction. The contribution of tracheotomy in comparison to intubation in patients on the resuscitation ward is debated. The main purpose of our study is to assess if tracheotomy compared to prolonged intubation, reduces the whole duration of ventilation, the frequency of nosocomial pneumopathy, the mean duration of hospitalisation in the resuscitation ward and mortality. Patients and method...

Syndromic craniosynostosis is associated with a high rate of respiratory difficulty, due mainly to midfacial hypoplasia. Nasopharyngeal airway establishment has been reported as the first-line approach to airway obstruction and may obviate the need for a highly invasive tracheotomy. No previous studies have compared airway obstruction status in syndromic craniosynostosis between cases requiring...

BACKGROUND Home tracheotomy mechanical ventilation (HTMV) can prolong survival in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) when non-invasive ventilation (NIV) fails, but knowledge about HTMV is scarce. The aim of this study was to determine the causes of tracheotomy and the main issues of 1-year HTMV in a cohort of patients with ALS. METHODS A prospective study of all patients needin...

OBJECTIVE To report successful cases of extubation from invasive mechanical ventilation at our institution using pulmonary rehabilitation consisting of noninvasive ventilation (NIV) in neuromuscular patients with experience of reintubation. METHODS Patients who experienced extubation failure via the conventional weaning strategy but afterwards had extubation success via NIV were studied retro...