How long do you leave people on the breathing machine when they have lung cancer?

Question: How long do you leave people on the breathing machine when they have lung cancer?
- Keywords:
  cancer,
  machine,
  medicine
Asked by bellk19 to Natalie on 11 Nov 2019.
- Natalie Fowler answered on 11 Nov 2019:
  
  The scientific name for a breathing machine is a ‘Ventilator’ and we use these to breathe for our patients when they cannot breathe enough for themselves. Lung cancer is just one possible reasons why this might happen. A ventilator is a life support machine but does not treat the disease. Every patient is different so the length of time will vary but we aim to take patients off the ventilators as early as we can to allow them to get back to breathing for themselves. Ventilators can cause infections and stop patients getting out of bed, they also usually require the patient to be sedated (drugs are given to put the patient to sleep) and we try to do this for as little time as possible.

Question: How long do you leave people on the breathing machine when they have lung cancer?