Tehran University Medical Journal

Background: percutaneous dilatational tracheostomy was invented by ciaglia in 1985. With advent of various instruments, various methods such as Fantoni, Grigges and etc, it became a widesepreadly used method of tracheostomy, especially in intensive care unit wards. In our country this was began in 2005, along with many work shops conducted by anesthesiology department of Tehran University of Medical sciences, with help of specialist from Turin University from ITALY.

Case report: In this report two patients who underwent percutaneous dilatational tracheostomy are presented, and are compared with patients who had undergo surgical tracheostomy. Their long and short term complications such as bleeding, injury extents, and recovery was studied and presented.

Conclusion: Tracheostomy is an opening in front of neck, in to the trachea, through which breathing is made possible. Percutaneous Dilatational Ttracheostomy (PDT) is a method of tracheostomy, in which the need for surgery and transfer of patient to operation room is alleviated. Dispite various benefits, PDT has a few short term and long term drawbacks, which are cartilage fracture, injury to vital structures, perforation of posterior wall, sever bleeding displacement of tube, tracheo-esophageal fistula and trache-oinnominate fistula. Incidence of these complications are lower than surgical tracheostomy. Global reports, especialllly from countries with large scale experiences present a different statistic regarding its success as an alternative method for patients with long surveillance and under mechanical ventilation.