Evaluation of Early Postoperative Complications Following Tracheotomy

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the early postoperative complications related to tracheotomy performed by surgeons and residents in the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (OMS) at the University of Florida College of Dentistry (UFCD; Gainesville, FL). The authors hypothesized that complications with this surgical technique would be substantially different among the different medical diagnoses of these patients and the number of complications would positively correlate with the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) physical status classification.

The authors implemented a retrospective study of all patients who underwent a tracheotomy procedure by the UFCD OMS department from July 2011 through March 2015. Patients were evaluated for medical comorbidities (predictor variables) and tracheotomy complications (outcome variable) within 1 week of the procedure and were compared across ASA classes.

A total of 319 patients were evaluated in this retrospective study. There were 14 patients identified with recorded complications, including 11 patients with a bleeding complication (3.4%), and 3 patients with other complications (0.9%). The other complications included dislodgement of the tube, subcutaneous emphysema, and cellulitis. The distribution of patients across ASA groups was not statistically different for patients with no bleeding versus bleeding complications (P > .05 by χ² test). However, the distribution of patient gender was found to differ across ASA groups (P < .001 by χ² test). The proportion of men to women in the bleeding complications group was not statistically different (P > .1 by binomial test). However, mean age was found to be statistically different for bleeding complications between men and women (63.4 yr for men; 42.7 yr for women; P < .05 by t test).

The result of this study supports a low rate of complications after a tracheotomy procedure performed by faculty and residents at the UFCD OMS department and is lower than published tracheotomy complication rates reported by other surgical specialties.