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Filter by:When preparing an ICU patient for percutaneous dilational tracheostomy, correct positioning of the endotracheal tube is important. During the procedure, it is possible to puncture the cuff. Tracheal tube cuff puncture can lead to failure of ventilation, loss of positive end-expiratory pressure, and possible aspiration of gastric contents blood or secretions. To minimize the risk, in our ICU, we withdraw the endotracheal tube under direct laryngoscopic vision until the cuff is visible at the vocal cords. This maneuver would also facilitate insertion of the Seldinger needle and insertion of the tracheostomy tube below the endotracheal tube. However, this maneuver to remove the endotracheal tube under direct laryngoscopy can sometimes be difficult. ICU patients present frecuently difficult laryngoscopic vision due to airway edema or secretions. In ICU, the videolaryngopy has been shown to be superior to direct laryngoscopy in visualization the upper airway, allowing better laryngoscopic vision.
Acute circulatory failure is frequent, affecting up to one-third of patients admitted to intensive care units (ICU). Monitoring hemodynamics and cardiac function is therefore a major concern. Analysis of respiratory diameter variations of the superior vena cava (SVC) is easily obtained with transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) and is helpful to assess fluid responsiveness. Transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) exploration of the SVC is not used in routine. Recently, micro-convex ultrasound transducers have been marketed and these may be of use for non-invasive SVC flow examination. However, analysis of diameter variations of the SVC with TTE does not seem to be possible since the approach from the supraclavicular fossa does not allow for a good visualization of the SVC walls. It was recently demonstrated in a short pilot study that TTE examination of the SVC flow with a micro-convex ultrasound transducer (GE 8C-RS) seems both easy to learn and to use (feasibility = 84.9%), and is reproducible in most ventilated ICU patients with an intraclass correlation coefficient for the systolic fraction of the superior vena cava flow of 0.90 (95% confidence interval [0.86-0.93]). The hypothesis is that cardio-respiratory interactions in intubated-ventilated patients are responsible of SVC flow variations and that the analysis of the SVC flow respiratory variations could be a new predictive tool of fluid responsiveness.