One-year experience after adoption of an on-table extubation protocol following pediatric cardiac surgery

To report our initial experience with on-table extubation following cardiac surgery for congenital heart disease, assessing its efficacy and safety, and the potential for fast-tracking these patients through the intensive care unit (ICU).

We decided to implement a multidisciplinary protocol aiming toward on-table extubation following congenital cardiac surgery at our hospital. Between December 2018 and January 2020, 376 patients underwent congenital cardiac surgery. The management strategy involved choosing the patients preoperatively, a specific anesthetic technique, application of a standard extubation protocol, multidisciplinary team approach, and perioperative echocardiogram for assessment of surgical repair. Relevant data were collected and analyzed.

Out of the 376 patients who underwent congenital cardiac surgery during the study period, 44 patients were extubated on-table. Although a majority of these patients belonged to Risk Adjustment for Congenital Heart Surgery-1 score (RACHS-1) 1 and 2 categories, 18% of the patients who were extubated on-table were of RACHS-3 category. This included a wide spectrum of anatomical substrates such as endocardial cushion defects, pulmonary venous anomalies, single ventricle physiology, valvular defects, and others such as cor triatriatum and sinus of Valsalva aneurysm. There was no in-hospital mortality related to on-table extubation. Only one patient was reintubated following on-table extubation resulting in a reintubation rate of 2.27% among those patients extubated on-table. The patients extubated on-table had a shorter ICU stay (25.89 ± 7.20 h) compared with those patients who underwent delayed extubation (59.30 ± 6.80 h). The duration of the hospital stay was also significantly reduced in these patients (91.09 ± 20.40 h) leading to an earlier discharge compared with those patients who underwent delayed extubation (134.40 ± 16.20 h).

On-table extubation is an attractive alternative in limited-resource environments to enhance recovery in patients following congenital cardiac malformations. Owing to the lack of significant comorbidities such as Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) in this patient population, corrective surgery for cardiac malformation usually optimizes the cardiorespiratory status. This results in more chances of successful extubation immediately following surgery. However, this requires proper perioperative planning, a careful discussion about the choice of patients, adoption of an extubation protocol, and most importantly, a multidisciplinary team approach. It is associated with low morbidity and mortality, with reduced length of stay in the ICU and hospital. This preliminary study demonstrated that on-table extubation is feasible following congenital cardiac surgery at our center and greatly reduces the intensive care requirements. This article focuses mainly on the decision-making process which determines the ideal candidates for on-table extubation and the anesthetic protocol implemented in a low-resource environment to enable the same.