Sixty-five studies were included in the review. Seventeen SgT studies (1960-1984) were included with 4,188 participants. Twenty- one SgT studies (1985-1996) were included with 3,512 participants. Twenty-seven PcT studies (1985-1996) were included with 1,817 participants.
Earlier surgical tracheostomy studies have the highest rates of both peri- (8.5%) and postoperative (33%) complications.
Comparison of recent surgical and percutaneous tracheostomy trials show that perioperative complications are more frequent with the percutaneous technique (10% versus 3%), whereas postoperative complications occur more often with surgical tracheotomy (10% versus 7%).
The bulk of the differences are in minor complications, except perioperative death (0.44% versus 0.03%) and serious cardiorespiratory events (0.33% versus 0.06%), which were higher with the percutaneous technique.
Heterogeneity was higher in the older and surgical trials.