Complications of tracheotomy
No patient developed accidental airway problem such as acute airway obstruction or orotracheal tube obstruction. Patients with tracheotomy tended to have longer duration of overall hospital stay (41.6 days) than those without tracheotomy (25.5 days). The mortality was higher but not statistically significantly (p = 0.290) higher in the tracheotomy group (Table 3). In the early tracheotomy group, trachea-cervical fistula shown as continuously draining pus from trachea to neck developed in one patient (Table 5). Mean hospitalization duration was 56.3 days in the late tracheotomy group, longer than 30.5 days in the early tracheotomy group. It might be due to more mortality rate in the early tracheotomy group.