Further study is needed in our setting to confirm this observation. Trauma to the head and neck was the leading indications in the 3rd decade of life in our series and interestingly the majority of these injuries were from road traffic crashes especially involving motorcycles which have become a major means of commuter transportation in Tanzania. This group represents the economically

active age and portrays an economic loss both to the family and the nation and the reason for their high incidence of head and neck injuries reflects their high activity levels and participation in high-risk activities. The fact that the economically productive age-group were mostly involved calls for an urgent public policy response. The surgical technique employed in all our patients STAT inhibitor was the transverse skin crease incision in the operating room. This is the method preferred by us whether it’s an emergency or an elective tracheostomy because of the advantage

of a better cosmetic result though, the vertical incision has the advantage of running in the line of the trachea and it is easy to perform and less vascular. The presence of postoperative complications has an impact on the final outcome of tracheostomatized patients. The rate of postoperative complication in our study was 21.5%, which is higher than what was reported by others [10, 20]. However, much higher complication rates have been reported from other centres in Nigeria [11, 16, 18, 19]. In other studies, complication rates of between RG7112 cost 6-66% have been quoted [20, 23]. The reason for high rate of complications following tracheostomy in our study may be because the majority of tracheostomies in our patients were performed

on emergency basis by non-otorhinolaryngologist junior doctors who may have little experiences in performing these procedures. It is therefore Nutlin-3 recommended that tracheostomy should be performed by an experienced surgeon with adequate facilities to reduce the potential complications. Post-tracheostomy complication rates were found to be significantly higher in emergency tracheostomy than in elective one, which is comparable to other studies done elsewhere [16, 19]. This observation is at variance with one this website report which reported elective tracheostomy as the most frequent performed procedure [20]. Complication rates related to tracheostomy was also significantly higher in children aged 10 years and below than in adult patients which is in agreement with other studies [16, 20]. High complication rate in patients who had emergency tracheostomy can be explained by the fact that the majority of patients with upper airway obstruction presented late to the Accident and Emergency department in severe respiratory obstruction and so emergency tracheostomy was always a rule.