US Practitioner Attitudes Toward Tracheostomy Timing, Benefits, Risks, and Techniques for Severe Stroke Patients: A National Survey and National Inpatient Sample Analysis

Excerpt

The stroke-related early tracheostomy versus prolonged orotracheal intubation in neurocritical care trial 2 (SETPOINT2) is a recently completed multicenter study started in 2016 to investigate the optimal timing of tracheostomy in patients intubated with severe stroke [1]. When SETPOINT2 was undergoing planning via the neurocritical care research network (NCRN), a survey was conducted to assess attitudes of US Neurocritical Care Society (NCS) members toward tracheostomy timing, techniques, and benefits and risks for severe stroke patients. As a precursor to the upcoming release of the SETPOINT2 results, we report the results of this original planning survey to share its insights into beliefs among neuro-ICU practitioners related to stroke and tracheostomy timing, methodology, and decision making. For external validation of the survey’s results regarding when tracheostomy is typically performed, we report an analysis of the mean number of days to tracheostomy among those patients with ischemic stroke, intracerebral hemorrhage, and subarachnoid hemorrhage in the National Inpatient Sample (NIS) who received tracheostomy during their hospitalization. …