Ventilación mecánica y traqueotomía. Protocolo de destete de ventilación mecánica y decanulación de la Unidad de Cuidados Respiratorios Intermedios de la Fundación Jiménez Díaz

This article presents a decanulation protocol procedure for difficult to wean patients from the intensive care units in whom mechanical ventilation weaning has not been possible, and left this units needing invasive mechanical ventilation and tracheotomy. The appearance of the socalled Intermediate Respiratory Units allow pulmonologists, specialized in critical care medicine to treat these patients as those units deal with upper airway management, artificial invasive and non invasive mechanical ventilation and respiratory endoscopy. Our Pulmonology service include an intermediate respiratory unit and have wide experience in weaning patients from mechanical ventilation and subsequent decanulation. At present, no article in the literature globally explains the management of these patients. We present the protocol we follow in our unit with which we have obtained very favorable results in this type of patient.