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].