You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Archimedes
Do cuffed endotracheal tubes increase the risk of airway mucosal injury and post-extubation stridor in children?
  1. C S Ashtekar,
  2. A Wardhaugh
  1. University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff, UK; archetan@doctors.org.uk

https://doi.org/10.1136/adc.2005.077651

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    You are a paediatric registrar on the children’s intensive care unit. You are about to intubate a 2 year old child with severe meningococcal septicaemia. Your recent experience in ventilating children with this condition is that they often develop acute respiratory distress syndrome, and require high pressures to maintain adequate oxygenation and ventilation. At these high pressures significant leaks occur around the endotracheal tube, impairing effective ventilation, and on occasion it is necessary to change to an endotracheal tube of greater diameter. Re-intubation under such circumstances carries a greater risk of hypoxia because of the inevitable loss of positive airway pressure during the procedure. You think it would be wise to insert a cuffed endotracheal tube, in which the cuff could be inflated if leak becomes a problem. It …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • This case is based on experience from several cases. Details have been altered to ensure patient anonymity

    • Edited by Bob Phillips