TY - JOUR A1 - Flinspach, Armin Niklas A1 - Booke, Hendrik A1 - Zacharowski, Kai A1 - Balaban, Ümniye A1 - Herrmann, Eva A1 - Adam, Elisabeth T1 - Association of mortality and early tracheostomy in patients with COVID-19: a retrospective analysis T2 - Scientific reports N2 - COVID-19 adds to the complexity of optimal timing for tracheostomy. Over the course of this pandemic, and expanded knowledge of the disease, many centers have changed their operating procedures and performed an early tracheostomy. We studied the data on early and delayed tracheostomy regarding patient outcome such as mortality. We performed a retrospective analysis of all tracheostomies at our institution in patients diagnosed with COVID-19 from March 2020 to June 2021. Time from intubation to tracheostomy and mortality of early (≤ 10 days) vs. late (> 10 days) tracheostomy were the primary objectives of this study. We used mixed cox-regression models to calculate the effect of distinct variables on events. We studied 117 tracheostomies. Intubation to tracheostomy shortened significantly (Spearman’s correlation coefficient; rho = − 0.44, p ≤ 0.001) during the course of this pandemic. Early tracheostomy was associated with a significant increase in mortality in uni- and multivariate analysis (Hazard ratio 1.83, 95% CI 1.07–3.17, p = 0.029). The timing of tracheostomy in COVID-19 patients has a potentially critical impact on mortality. The timing of tracheostomy has changed during this pandemic tending to be performed earlier. Future prospective research is necessary to substantiate these results. Y1 - 2022 UR - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/82661 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-826615 SN - 2045-2322 VL - 12 IS - Article number: 15406 PB - Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature CY - London ER -