Resp Care
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Pierre-Robin syndrome (PRS) is often associated with difficulty in endotracheal intubation. We present the use of percutaneous dilational tracheotomy (PDT) for airway management of a newborn with PRS and a glossopharyngeal web. A 2-day-old term newborn with PRS and severe obstructive dyspnea was evaluated by the anesthesiology team for airway management. ⋯ Using 5 French, 7 French, 9 French, and 11 French central venous catheter kit dilators, staged tracheotomy stoma dilation was performed. By inserting a size 3.0 tracheotomy cannula, PDT was successfully completed in this newborn. This case describes the successful use of PDT for emergency airway management of a newborn with PRS and glossopharyngeal web.
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For the busy clinician, educator, or manager, it is becoming an increasing challenge to filter the literature to what is relevant to one's practice and then update one's practice based on the current evidence. The purpose of this paper is to review the recent literature related to long-term oxygen therapy, pulmonary rehabilitation, airway management, acute lung injury and acute respiratory distress syndrome, respiratory care education, and respiratory care management. These topics were chosen and reviewed in a manner that is most likely to have interest to the readers of Respiratory Care.
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Review Case Reports
Emergency bedside extracorporeal membrane oxygenation for rescue of acute tracheal obstruction.
A 39-year-old man experienced total obstruction of a distal tracheal plastic stent by a tumor mass, preventing effective ventilation and resulting in cardiac arrest. Resuscitation by emergency bedside venoarterial extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) permitted time to physically remove the obstructing tumor and reestablish successful ventilation and liberation from ventilatory support. We review several other reported cases of emergency ECMO to resuscitate patients with acute airway obstruction.