The decision is rarely a sudden one. Already a family has sat for weeks or months at the side of a ventilator, watching a child who once needed only a mask now need a tube through the mouth that risks further injury to the larynx. What Is Tracheostomy Tube Used For? – The question is direct in the clinic or at the bedside at Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital. It provides a safe direct route into the trachea so air and, if needed, a ventilator can reach the lungs without having to go through a compromised upper airway. I have put in and managed these tubes in children whose stories later appear, in carefully changed form, in the operating-room chapters of Breathless: Surgical Tales from the Brink (and Back), available on Amazon.