High-flow Nasal Oxygen Therapy to Prevent Extubation Failure in Adult Trauma Intensive Care Patients

A significant proportion of patients who are intubated for trauma-related injuries, will fail the extubation process. This means that, when the decision has been made to remove the endotracheal tube, a certain proportion of these patients will require the endotracheal tube to be re-inserted. Global estimates for the rates of re-intubation range from 5-15% of all patients who have had attempted extubation on Intensive Care Units. The exact figures for intubated victims of trauma are not available. Re-intubation is associated with increased intensive care and hospital length of stay, increased morbidity, and the physical risks to the patient inherent with the intubation process. There is also some evidence that the rates of tracheostomy are higher in patients who have failed extubation. A number of interventions have been developed to help prevent extubation failure. Non-invasive ventilation and high-flow nasal oxygen are routinely employed in practice. However, there have been no specific studies of these interventions in TICU patients. High-flow nasal oxygen therapy (HFNO) has emerged over the last decade as a viable adjunct in the management of patients suffering from, or at risk of, hypoxemic respiratory failure. Within the intensive care unit settings, HFNO has been studies in terms of preventing intubation, but it has been evaluated more often in terms of preventing extubation failure.

Our study aims to answer the question of whether HFNO is effective at preventing extubation failure in intubated and ventilated victims of traumatic injuries. Previous studies on the same subject, are not based on unequivocal, robust RCTs with low risk of bias. Our primary outcome measure is re-intubation rates and secondary outcome measures are CO2 accumulation rates, atelectasis rates, nutrition status within first 24 hours post extubation, and post - extubation rates of vomiting. Ours will be a prospective, randomized clinical control study. There will be three arms to the study: a control arm, and two intervention arms. Randomization will be done on a permuted block basis. The control arm will be patients receiving standard oxygen therapy, and the intervention arms will be either High Flow Nasal Oxygen Therapy or Non-invasive Ventilation via mask. We propose that, when compared with either face-mask O2, NIV (CPAP), HFNO administered continuously for 24 hours post extubation of trauma patients on ICU, will result in better patient-related outcomes.