PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Stefano Baglioni
AU  - Maurizio Dottorini
AU  - Elvio Scoscia
AU  - Emanuela Albo
AU  - Amir Eslami
AU  - Elisabetta Fiandra
AU  - Marta Abbritti
AU  - Oronzo Penza
TI  - Transtracheal oxygen therapy as an effective treatment in patients suffering from severe hypoxemia and with high flow oxygen requirement: Description of two cases
DP  - 2011 Sep 01
TA  - European Respiratory Journal
PG  - p3707
VI  - 38
IP  - Suppl 55
4099  - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/38/Suppl_55/p3707.short
4100  - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/38/Suppl_55/p3707.full
SO  - Eur Respir J2011 Sep 01; 38
AB  - Patients suffering from severe hypoxemia requiring high flow oxygen administration are very difficult to treat at home and have a poor quality of life. Transtracheal oxygen therapy (TTO) has been used for many years as an alternative to conventional device for oxygen treatment, but it is only used in a small portion of patients requiring long term O2 therapy (LTOT) and nowadays this tecnique is rarely used, al least in our country.We describe the cases of two patients admitted to our Unit due to severe hypoxemic failure needing very high oxygen flow.First case: male, age 65, suffering from lung fibrosis, admitted in our RICU in January 2010. Second case: female, age 53, suffering from severe COPD (panlobular emphysema), admitted on december 2010.Despite optimal medical treatment and respiratory therapist intervention, oxygen requirement remained very high in both cases (12-14 l/min). RR, ABG value and SaO2 improved during TTO as showed in Tables 1 and 2.View this table:Table 1. O2 therapy by maskView this table:Table 2. O2 therapy by TTOWe utilized a modified Seldinger procedure (SCOOP cathether) to perform TTO.We didn't observe significant adverse events during the procedure and the follow-up (one year and 2 months respectively). Dyspnoea (Borg scale) and quality of life improved significantly. TTO should be considered as a safe and effective option in LTOT in a well-defined group of patients, in particular for those requiring high oxygen flow administration.