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Invited Commentary
September 19, 2019

The Multidisciplinary Tracheostomy Team: A Parachute for Tracheostomy-Dependent Children

Author Affiliations
  • 1Department of Otolaryngology, School of Medicine and Pediatric Otolaryngology, Children’s Hospital Colorado, University of Colorado, Aurora
  • 2Department of Pediatrics, Section of Pulmonary Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Colorado, Aurora
JAMA Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. 2019;145(11):1042-1043. doi:10.1001/jamaoto.2019.2499

In their article “Association of a Multidisciplinary Care Approach With the Quality of Care After Pediatric Tracheostomy,” McKeon et al1 present their single-center experience of implementing a multidisciplinary tracheostomy team (MDT). Having taken the Global Tracheostomy Collaborative’s 5 key drivers for tracheostomy care to heart (standardization of care protocols, broad staff education, patient and family involvement, monitoring of outcomes, and multidisciplinary collaboration), the authors and their institution created an MDT in 2015.2 This MDT consists of clinicians from 11 disciplines involved in the care of patients with tracheostomies. The group meets regularly, communicating with and seeing patients in both inpatient and outpatient settings. The makeup of the multidisciplinary team and its activities are presented in Table 1 and the Methods section of the article.1 Patients at Boston Children’s Hospital who were tracheostomy dependent or who underwent tracheostomy placement during the study period were observed by the MDT prospectively. Data presented therein were collected from 2015 to 2018.

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