If you are intubated (on the ventilator in ICU), is there a continuous feeling of wanting to cough?

Because of the pipe in your throat?

When adults are intubated, the endotracheal tube passes through the vocal cords, and into the trachea. The tube that goes into your trachea has a cuff on the end of it that is inflated to keep it in place. If the patient is properly sedated, there is usually no desire to cough unless the patient is being suctioned. However, if the patient is awake, then the endotracheal tube can be extremely irritating- and the desire to cough continuously is highly likely. That's why we try to get the patients off the ventilator as soon as they can handle it.

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it depends. A lot of the time, the patient is kept sedated and so doesn't know of the tube. If the patient is awake, the tube isn't deep enough to trigger cough.

My son was intubated when he was three years old for Acute Epiglottitis. They had to do an emergency tracheosotomy (not a conventional tracheotomy because there was a pipe in place to help him breathe, not permanent like a tracheotomy.) on him. He had the tube in for ten days while his the swelling in his epiglottis went down. He is grown, now and he told me that it hurts like a sore throat and swallowing is difficult (I know, that much is apparent) and that he felt more like gagging than coughing.

If you are talking actual intubation, the tube goes into your trachea, well past the gag reflex to just above the bifurcation (where it splits into two tubes). What this means is that should you be conscious, rather than a sense of coughing, you would begin to gag strenuously. This is why once a patient wakes enough to breathe on their own, the tube is removed quickly. If you are on a ventilator in ICU, chances are you aren't breathing adequately on your own. If you are, you would not be intubated, though they might place an airway in your throat. Even so, that stimulates the gag reflex so if you are conscious, you would spit it out. Nobody wants you vomiting and aspirating, though with a full tube you wouldn't. The rare times where patients are conscious require sedation and careful monitoring.

Hi

Well being on both sides of the vent, ICU nurse and a few times icu pt on a vent, you are usually kept sedated enough so that you are not aware of anything. Like a deep sleep.

If someone is coughing while on a vent, either the doc chose for some reason not to sedate much, like people with head traumas and so on, or it is the natural reflex of the body if the patient is sedated.

Long term vent patients usually are not sedated are awake are aware and can even communicate by writing notes an so on.

I hope this helps.

Be safe and be well