Postoperative complications associated with NGT use
These potential complications become of more significance when considering the intubation times of patients and the extended periods of NGT use. Typically, patients are extubated within a few hours after cardiac surgery. In their study, Kotfis and colleagues reported an average intubation time of 14.93 hours [35]. However, those more complex patients who require prolonged periods of intubation, are at higher risk of developing adverse effects related to the NGT use such as respiratory complications, gastrointestinal complications, and postoperative pain and discomfort [35,36,37,38,39].