Epidemiology of Tracheostomy Patients in Intensive Care Unit of King Abdulaziz Medical City

Introduction: Tracheostomy is one of the common procedures that are performed in the intensive care unit (ICU) for airway management. The primary aim of this study was to review the role of tracheostomy, its benefits and risks in ICUs of King Abdul-Aziz Medical City (KAMC), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia with a view to realize factors affecting the patient’s outcome.

Materials and Methods: A retrospective study reviewed the charts of various adult ICUs of KAMC from the patients’ medical records. Patients who aged 18 years and above and underwent tracheostomy in the ICU were evaluated for the incidence and hospital outcome. Analysis of data was done by SPSS (Version 22). Data was analyzed statistically by using frequencies, percentages mean, standard deviation. Mann-Whitney U test and chi-square tests were done to study the influence and difference between of various variables.

Results: Total number of 128 patients was tracheostomized with predominance of males with mean age of 61.30 ± 20.05 years. The majority were diagnosed with Stroke/Traumatic Brain Injury (28.1%) followed by Carcinoma (13.3%). The predominant reason for tracheostomy was prolonged intubation 54.7% while the main complication was fever and infection (30.8%). The mean duration of the ICU stay was 37.01 ± 38.603 days. The outcome of this study showed low mortalities for tracheostomy patients.

Conclusion: Tracheostomy performed in the ICUs of KAMC was dominantly done in males mainly with indication of prolonged intubation. It was associated with fever and infection as complication and with low mortality rate.