Tracheostomy care for adults and the elderly in the home environment: a scoping review.
Aldenora Laísa Paiva de Carvalho Cordeiro, Jade Alycia Ribeiro E Santos, Ana Clara Leite Barroso and 3 others
PMID 39101811WHAT IT FOUND
Home tracheostomy care for adults and elderly people is described mainly as suction, stoma cleaning, dressing changes, tube fixation and humidification.
Communication and social reintegration appear less often. Spiritual care is absent. The review maps practice, not tested outcomes.
Key findings
01The review included 14 studies. All included studies addressed physical care needs such as airway suction, stoma and endocannula cleaning, and dressings or laces.
02Seven studies described communication or social care, including esophageal voice or speech aids, and two described social reintegration.
03No study reported spiritual care, and the review did not assess evidence quality, so it cannot establish safe or effective home care.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPsWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
This scoping review did not assess the quality of the included evidence, so it cannot tell clinicians which home-care recommendations are safe or effective. Only English, Portuguese and Spanish publications were searched, so relevant studies in other languages may have been missed. The included sources were heterogeneous and many were descriptive studies, clinical opinions or small reviews rather than tested interventions. Psychosocial care was thinly described, especially how to resolve communication difficulty, social isolation, caregiver burden or body-image concerns at home. Elderly-specific care was not developed, despite the review including elderly people; one study mentioned elderly care but did not differentiate it from adult care. The review mainly mapped what caregivers are expected to do, not patient outcomes after discharge.
Declared interests
Financial support came from the Support Foundation of the Federal University of Minas Gerais, FUNDEP. The supplied text does not report author conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the suction pressure of 100 to 150 mmHg and the 10 to 15 second procedure as proven safety standards for every home patient. The review did not assess study quality, and these recommendations came from heterogeneous descriptive studies, reviews and clinical opinions.