Objective: To determine whether treatment with corticosteroids decreases the incidence of postextubation airway obstruction in an adult intensive care unit.
Design: Clinical experiment.
Setting: Adult medical and surgical intensive care unit of a teaching hospital.
Patients: One hundred twenty-eight patients who were intubated for >24 hrs with a cuff leak volume <24% of tidal volume and met weaning criteria.
Interventions: : Patients were randomized into a placebo group (control, n = 43) receiving four injections of normal saline every 6 hrs, a 4INJ group (n = 42) receiving four injections of methylprednisolone sodium succinate, or a 1INJ group (n = 42) receiving one injection of the corticosteroid followed by three injections of normal saline. Cuff volume was assessed 1 hr after each injection, and extubation was performed 1 hr after the last injection. Postextubation stridor was confirmed by examination using bronchoscopy or laryngoscopy.
Measurements and main results: The incidences of postextubation stridor were lower both in the 1INJ and the 4INJ groups than in the control group (11.6% and 7.1% vs. 30.2%, both p < .05), whereas there was no difference between the two treated groups (p = .46). The cuff leak volume increased after the second and fourth injection in the 4INJ group and after a second injection in the 1INJ group compared with the control group (both p < .05).
Conclusions: A reduced cuff leak volume is a reliable indicator to identify patients at high risk to develop stridor. Treatment with a single or multiple injections of methylprednisolone can effectively reduce the occurrence of postextubation stridor.