Not something I would recommend – either for a therapeutic intervention or as a method of suicide! I remember as an intern having another bizarre case of a depressed man trying to end it all. He decided, after the mandatory 10 beers that nearly everyone consumes before such decisions are made, that the best way to end his life would be to stab himself in the neck with, you guessed it, a Phillips head screwdriver! Ugh! I guess he had no knife available since cutting one’s external jugular vein would be supremely easier and more effective.
He was found by his girlfriend in the bathroom digging away at his neck with the aforementioned hand tool, blood all over the place. She called 911 and they brought him in having oxygen supplied to him via a trach collar! He had bored himself a very nice 1 cm ostomy in his trachea – in the exact place you would perform a surgical tracheotomy. He nicely avoided the thyroid arcades and the bleeding had pretty much stopped on its own.
He was trying however to occlude the trach with his hand so he could breath better out his mouth – which was not very effective. He was coughing and sputtering and from his anxious appearance he might have finally realised that what he had done was a pretty bad idea!
He had a pretty negative CT scan of his neck and basically his self made trach was repaired several days later and he was discharged, after the now familiar psych consult…..
Not that it’s easy but I’ll top it with bad things to do — trach dependant patient (pharyngeal ssc) tried to cut his trach out with a plastic knife from the food tray. Blood went into the stoma, induced wild coughing and sprayed all over the room — ever surface of the room was covered.
http://www.waittimes.blogspot.com
Ew.