Pediatric ICU Fellow, Dr. Priyanka Mehrotra has received the Bronze Snapshot Research Award from the Society of Critical Care Medicine for her study, “Timing of Tracheostomy in Critically Ill Infants and Children with Respiratory Failure: A PHIS Study."
Despite tracheostomy’s historical depth, the growing complexity of the pediatric patient requiring long-term ventilation makes the decision of when to undergo tracheostomy challenging, creating vast variability in practice standards for timing of tracheostomy insertion in pediatric patients. In this study, Dr. Mehrotra aims to contribute to the current literature on timing of pediatric tracheostomy. She will describe the timing of tracheostomy placement, associated demographics, and clinical characteristics in a large pediatric critical care cohort using the Pediatric Health Information system database. Dr. Mehrotra will then compare the clinical outcomes based on timing of tracheostomy.
Dr. Mehrotra's overall goal is to provide more data on pediatric tracheostomy timing and associated outcomes to alleviate the shared decision-making burden amongst physicians and parents when discussing this life-altering intervention.