Role of Recombinant Human Growth Hormone rHGH in Weaning of Prolonged Ventilation After Major Abdominal Cancer Surgeries.

Major abdominal surgeries may be followed by postoperative pulmonary complications (PPCs). These complications are common and can cause significant morbidity and mortality.

Major operations are followed by acute respiratory insufficiency (RI) in 3%-27.4%, which causes prolonged hospital stay, high patient costs, high mortality rate and lower survival rates. The most crucial pulmonary postoperative complication is the prolonged mechanical ventilation and difficult weaning.The rHGH is a synthetic metabolic hormone which improves synthesis of protein, corrects hypoalbumenia, reverses negative nitrogen balance, improves patient nutrition, improves wound healing and promotes recovery of respiratory muscle function. When used for weaning from mechanical ventilation, rHGH reducess the duration of mechanical ventilation time, ICU admission period, incidence of VAP & ICU mortality. Felbinger et al reported a case of prolonged ventilation with failure of weaning after 42 days; the patient received subcutaneous rHGH (0.3 IU/kg/day) for 20 days in addition to intensive care standard management. They reported improvement of protein metabolism in addition to improvement of respiratory muscle strength, the patient was weaned successfully on the 75th postoperative day.this study assumes a hypothesis that rHGH would help weaning from mechanically ventilated tracheostomized patients.