There seems to be a trend in Hollywood. If a scene is falling flat, add someone choking. But the Heimlich maneuver is boring, over played. Wait, I know! He's not really choking, he's suffocating! And that means, instead of the boring,
vaguely erotic reach-around of the Heimlich, our heroes get to slice someone open.
Sometimes this is used to establish that a character has medical training. Sometimes a note of drama is added because the character performing the techniques does
not have the training, but usually he's being talked through it by someone who does. Like other
Hollywood medical techniques, this often goes smoothly and without complications...even when performed by non-doctors.
Supposedly, this has led to
idiots trying this on people who collapse for reasons that have nothing to do with breathing.
Examples
Comic Books
- In an issue of Deadpool (or possibly Agent X), Death Trap creator Arcade does this, much to everyone's surprise — not just that he knew how, but that he'd bother.
- Batman, to the surprise of no one, is capable of performing tracheotomies. He does this at one point in All-Star Batman and Robin to save Hal Jordan's life.
- In a Detective Comics story arc during the '90s, the Riddler got his hands on a demon summoning ritual that had been performed by Gotham's founders, which called for the sacrifice of a "human bat," who was prepared for the sacrifice through a series of gruesome and bizarre ordeals, among them slitting the throat of a newborn baby. So he kidnapped a baby, shoved a ping pong ball in its mouth and left it for Batman to find as he made his escape.
Film
- Jared Leto's character perform ones in Switchback to establish his character used to be in med school.
- David performed one in Just Like Heaven despite having no medical training. Elizabeth's quasi-ghost talks him through it.
- In Nurse Betty, Betty successfully performs a tracheotomy, knowing how to do so from obsessively watching a medical soap opera.
- Anaconda, and executed with the same amount of accuracy and attention to detail as the rest of the movie.
- Saw V has Strahm get his head locked inside a box that starts filling up with water. He survives by giving himself a tracheotomy with a pen.
- In Nancy Drew, Nancy performs this on a classmate who has a severe allergic reaction at a party (much to the horror of the other guests). Partially subverted since the movie plays with the idea that Nancy is always prepared for emergencies and appears to have had some degree of medical training.
- In The Princess and the Warrior, this is how the protagonists meet— Bodo, after inadvertently causing Sissi to be hit by a truck, performs an emergency tracheotomy *
presumably having learned how to do so during his time in the military
on her and disappears before Sissi can learn his name. As a result, she becomes obsessed with tracking him down.
Live Action TV
- Seen about once every other episode on House.
- Scrubs had Turk save someone's life this way. Dr. Cox tries to provoke him by pretending he did it via a Heimlich maneuver.
- The first time I ever heard of a tracheotomy was on an episode of Beachcombers. Nick had to perform one on someone who had collapsed due to an allergic reaction to seafood, causing his throat to swell.
- This happens in an episode of Xena Warrior Princess. A bounty hunter after Xena gets a dagger through his neck, courtesy of another bounty hunter. Xena cuts him a new breathing hole out of mercy. He still dies, though (though because of Applied Phlebotinum, not anything Xena did)
- The first episode of Wonderfalls involved this, after a character has an allergic reaction to peanuts.
- Of course, since neither other person in the car actually knew how to do it properly, it led to the hilarious "We've got a stabbing victim!" line.
- Once in MASH, Father Mulcahy had to do this, Hawkeye talking him through it via radio.
- Justified in that... well, it's a medical show.
- For extra drama, Mulcahy is a Priest, not a surgeon, they had to use a pen cap for the tube, and, oh yeah, Mulcahy was being shelled while it happened.
- Attempted in an episode of Fringe, due to a biological weapon that sealed bodily orifices. The skin then grew over the trache tube.
- In an episode of CSI Miami, the coroner had to do this to some random guy on the street.
- In another, one part of an incredibly convoluted Rasputinian Death involved a guy whose throat had swollen shut effectively had an emergency tracheotomy by being shot in the throat with a crossbow.
- American Idol had some tracheotomy-related drama, though not on-stage. Season 4 contestant Anthony Fedorov had had a tracheotomy when he was a child and had been told there was a chance he wouldn't even be able to speak again. And he not only spoke, he sang. Well enough to get 4th place.
- Malcolm In The Middle parodied this by having a grade-school student who "saw this on TV" attempt to preform a tracheotomy on someone who quite clearly did not need it. With a ball-point pen.
- Jake had to do this to a little girl in the first episode of Jericho.
- Seen in at least one episode of Casualty when one cast member found himself in the middle of nowhere with a wrecked whose driver hadn't been wearing a seatbelt and broken her larynx on the steering wheel or something.
- Parodied in the Lost pilot. Jack gives Rose CPR, and Boone suggests giving her a tracheotomy, and volunteers to ask passengers for pens. Jack agrees to get rid of him, then successfully revives Rose on her own. Later, Boone approaches him, hands full of pens, saying, "I wasn't sure which type works best."
Webcomics
- Parodied in a Full Frontal Nerdity strip where the writer lists cliches he hates in movies, and illustrates it by having the characters perform it on someone who has stubbed their toe.
