Compliance with intubation bundle and complications in critically ill patients: A need to revisit the bundle components!

Abstract Objectives Tracheal intubation in the intensive care unit (ICU) is associated with serious complications. Adherence to the intubation bundle may reduce these complications. We aimed to determine complication rates and whether bundle compliance affected complications. Methods and material We analysed complications of intubation in our ICU. The intubation bundle, with ten elements, is divided into pre-intubation, intubation, and post-intubation. We recorded the complications and classified them as major and minor. Bundle compliance was defined as either full or partial. Chi-square test, Fisher exact test, and student t-test were used and p  Results Of 158 adult intubations, 62 intubations were fully compliant with intubation bundle. Complications were similar whether compliance was complete or partial. Serious complications like hypoxemia, cardiovascular collapse, and cardiac arrest occurred during intubation. The need for vasopressor initiation before intubation was associated with severe hypotension, total, and major complications. Higher number of minor complications occurred with more attempts at intubation. Conclusions In our study compliance with intubation bundle did not affect the complications. Tracheal intubations were associated with frequent complications. Vasopressor need before intubation was associated with total and major complications.