The Outcomes of Tracheostomy in Pediatric Cardiac Surgical Patients

Objectives To describe the outcomes of postoperative tracheostomy and determine the predictors of survival. Design Prospective, observational study. Setting Cardiac surgical intensive care unit of a tertiary care hospital. Participants All pediatric patients below 10 years of age who underwent tracheostomy after cardiac surgery from January 2019 to December 2019. Different variables were compared between survivors and nonsurvivors. Intervention Tracheostomy. Results Among 1084 pediatric patients who underwent cardiac surgery during the study period, 41 (3.7%) received tracheostomy. Survival rate was 71%. Earlier, sternal closure (SC) (p = 0.04), acute kidney injury (AKI) (p = 0.001), serum C-reactive protein (CRP) (p = 0.007), duration of total parenteral nutrition (TPN) (p = 0.005) and days of feed interruption (FI) (p = 0.02), activated partial thromboplastin time (aPTT) before tracheostomy (p = 0.006), and bleeding from tracheostomy site (p = 0.02) were significantly low in the survivor group. Among the peritracheostomy variables taken at different time points, the levels of pH on tracheostomy day 1 (p = 0.03), serum lactate on tracheostomy day 2 (p = 0.01) and day 3 (p = 0.01), and random blood sugar (RBS) on tracheostomy day 3 (p = 0.04) were significantly lower in the survivor group. The arterial oxygen saturation (SaO2) on tracheostomy day 1 (p = 0.04) and the platelet count before tracheostomy (p = 0.02) were significantly higher in the survivor group. Conclusions Our study demonstrated a survival of 71% among the study cohort. Lesser duration of open sternum, lower incidence of AKI, less number of days on TPN and FI, lower posttracheostomy aPTT, bleeding, RBS, lactate, and higher pretracheostomy platelet count and posttracheostomy SaO2 were found to be the predictors of survival.