My 85 year old father has COPD and started choking yesterday and turned blue. He was rushed to hospital and they put a Bipap on him but later found in the reports that he has food lodged inside his lungs and that they needed to intubate him to go in and get it out. All I hear is horror stories about the intubation. Has anyone went through this with their LO?
So food is lodged deep in the lungs and need to be vacuumed out, otherwise he could end up with life threatening pneumonia. Even if he had orders for DNI, the benefits of this procedure should be greater. This procedure will be a half hour or less. There may be a small risk of a longer intubation. Why are you not talking to his physicians?
Your fathers problem causes pneumonia which is very serious in the elderly.
Intubation to me means putting in a tube that aids breathing on a long term basis; a bronchoscopy is a short procedure.
The bigger issue is that your dad is aspirating food. He needs a swallow study to figure out if he needs pureed food, thickened drinks and other modifications around eating.
If limits on his eating are going to be difficult for him due to his dementia, you might want to consider having a hospice consult after the bronchoscopy.
Ventingisback
Is he not conscious? Because if he is the decision is his.