I haven’t yet watched the whole thing, but based upon what I heard in the first 5 minutes, you should watch this.
Covid patients are on ventilators because of problems with their lungs. A tracheostomy is just an intrusive way to bypass the windpipe/throat if it is obstructed. You’d still need a ventilator to help the lungs. Seems like a huge net negative to have to insert it via surgery instead of down the throat.
A hole in someone's throat does nothing to help. You do that when someone is choking on a food item. Those people still have fully working lungs.
Gas_dr is the expert on this, though, so I'll ping him.
By the way, the 95% ventilator death rate we saw early on in New York City and elsewhere is no longer as bad.
the vent breaths for you, it’s not just an airway
I read a paper on it shortly after having been on a ventilator.
My recollection is that ventilation is a procedure for assuring sufficient oxygen for a patient whose own breathing can’t do the job, either due to lack of breathing, inefficient lungs, or both.
The problem is that the environment created by the ventilator is highly conducive to the growth of bacteria. The paper I read itemized about a dozen ways in which the patient and his environment can be improved to reduce VAP.
The paper described one hospital’s efforts which reduced the incidence of VAP from much greater than 50% to much less than 50%. The challenge is that no single item will demonstrate the desired improvement. You have to do all of the recommendations and exercise great discipline to get the desired results. This makes it very difficult to solve this problem using a trial and error approach.