Patients with spinal cord injury often achieved ventilator weaning during rehabilitation, with greater success seen among those with low cervical spinal cord injuries, according to a poster presented at the CHEST Annual Meeting.
Patients with cervical spinal cord injuries often experience respiratory dysfunction, and this is a notable contributor to morbidity and mortality in the population, according to the abstract.
“A lot of these patients met these [weaning] milestones at day 45 in rehab [following a 2-week hospital stay],” Casey Fenger, MD, of the division of physical medicine and rehabilitation at University of Utah, told Healio. “Many patients did successfully wean off the ventilator and, for the most part, the ones who didn’t had high complete and high incomplete injuries. The biggest predictor was the level, so patients with lower cervical injuries are more likely to wean.”
