[The cartilage conserving concept of surgical tracheostomy]

Most techniques of tracheostomy include a resection or at least incision of the cartilage himself. This may result in local tracheomalacia and chondritis.

We performed 48 tracheotomies (173 cases were totally performed in our in 2002 excluding laryngectomie patients) in with horizontal incision between 2 (nd) and 3 (rd) ring sparing all cartilage. The detailed technique is described and the (endoscopic controlled) follow-up data showed no complications. We called this techniques the visor-tracheostomy.

It is shown, that a modified concept of conservating cartilage while doing tracheostomy is easy to perform without any increasing in time and costs. The most important thing is to choose the right incision range.

It seems to us, that healing of these tracheotomies is better and secondary complications as stenosis of trachea should be less instead of the cases where Björk-flaps or simply local resection were performed.