vent pulls on trach

jamie · #1 01-08-2010, 07:22 AM

so evan is 13 and he is new to sleeping with a vent and trach, since july, so he has a regualr habit of tossing and turning all night. i thought we were getting a great night sleep last night only to wake up and see he is completely tied up in his pulse=ox and curcuit. his sats were good, but i couldnot untie him and his trach was pulling at least an inch and a half out.
now i am afraid it will come out in his sleep. aside from duct taping evan in place how can i get him to lie still at night

Alex's mom · #2 01-08-2010, 07:50 AM

My little one moves around a lot. She can't sit up on her own but she makes her way from one end of the bed to the other. We wake up most mornings with pulse ox wires, vent circuits and feeding tubes wrapped around all sorts of body parts. I do my best to clip the vent tubing to her jammies to try and prevent the tube from pulling out her trach.

They used these in the NICU and we have since worn ours out and use our own version of one now. You can order some free samples and see if they work for you.
http://neotechproducts.com/neogrip-t...izer-p-41.html

Sometimes it doesn't always work. It's rare for us, but the trach did actually come out on her in the middle of the night last weekend. The pulse ox alerted us and we popped it back in w/no harm done, but it can still be really scary.

kadiera · #3 01-08-2010, 10:33 AM

We tied Alexander's vent circuit to his neck to keep it from pulling his trach out:

We also generally tried to strategically locate the vent so that it was less likely to be too far away - Alexander is in a crib, so that was typically at one end, but for other sleeping arrangements, next to the middle of the bed might be better.

We always end up with a spaghetti mess though, and always have - in the hospital with EKG leads was the worst, but even now with just an O2 tube and a pulse ox, it's always in knots.

mariap76 · #4 01-08-2010, 10:45 AM

We also tie the vent on, we use a big kid size trach tie , cut a hole on each end and pull a string through the ends, this goes over top of the trach ties used to actually hold the trach in place, then you can tie the string around the vent in a bow and still have quick easy access for suctioning. Here is a picture of what we do.

jamie · #5 01-08-2010, 04:55 PM

evan hates when i tie the vent on, but for safety i probably will, i also would clip it to his shirt if he would wear one i also thought of nailing a shelf to his bed and adding a hose clip to the shelf might look funky, but it would add suport to all these tubes i am just so new to this. thanks everyone

Niff · #6 01-10-2010, 09:48 AM

In the beginning, we also tied the vent on. We used an adult sized tie, strapped rubber bands to the ends, and then hooked the rubber bands over her inline suction. The problem with this is that if you didn't get the measurements just right, the trach would end up pulling anyway. Plus when she ended up pulling her trach out, it was really tough to get everything off and get the trach back in. Here's a pic:

Then one of our RTs created a strap that straps the vent circuit to Mackenzie. It worked well but our circuit now isn't long enough to do this with.

Now we use the vent circuit clips by NeoTech (the website Stacey gave you) to clip the circuit to the crib sheet. Mackenzie tosses and turns still, constantly pulling. The vent circuit pops off every night at least once, and she's decannulated herself many, many times. There's just no fool proof way of doing it, unfortunately.

Melisande · #7 01-10-2010, 09:16 PM

It's been a little over a year since Donovan got off the vent at 5 1/2 years old. He was very active and tossed and turned a lot. We had a nurse that watched him at night and they periodically untangled him throughout the night. One thing I think helped was having a flextend bivona trach. That gave us some flexibility and made less torque on Donovan neck and vent connection.