Successful Tracheal Extubation within Eleven Minutes in the Post Anesthesia Care Unit in Children after Adenotonsillectomy

Background: Some pediatric centers prefer to extubate their patients in the operating rooms (ORs) while others prefer post-anesthesia care units (PACUs) for the same. Objectives: To share our retrospective experience of 214 pediatric adenotonsillectomy (T&A) patients cohort extubated in our pediatric PACU during a seven-month retrospective study-period. Materials and Methods: After institutional board approval for retrospective chart review, institutional electronic surgical database was used to identify patients who underwent T&A and the peri-anesthetic records were obtained from patients electronic medical records and/or from hospital paper records. Results: Patients tracheas were extubated in average 11 minutes (standard deviation 8 minutes) after arrival to PACU care and only one patient required tracheal re-intubation. Patients were ready for discharge from PACU in average 56 minutes (standard deviation 20 minutes) thus averaging only 44 minutes (standard deviation 20 minutes) after their tracheas had been extubated. Conclusion: Summarily for re-validating or refuting our results, institutions can prospectively create PACU extubation quality improvement projects to discern if tracheal extubation in PACU of all or some pediatric surgical patients is beneficial when their rapid turnover surgeries warrant anesthesia providers to not attempt their tracheal extubation in ORs.