Comparison of seven videolaryngoscopes with the Macintosh laryngoscope in manikins by experienced and novice personnel.

Videolaryngoscopy is often reserved for 'anticipated' difficult airways, but thereby can result in a higher overall rate of complications. We observed 65 anaesthetists, 67 residents in anaesthesia, 56 paramedics and 65 medical students, intubating the trachea of a standardised manikin model with a normal airway using seven devices: Macintosh classic laryngoscope, Airtraq(®) , Storz C-MAC(®) , Coopdech VLP-100(®) , Storz C-MAC D-Blade(®) , GlideScope Cobalt(®) , McGrath Series5(®) and Pentax AWS(®) ) in random order. Time to and proportion of successful intubation, complications and user satisfaction were compared.

Prehospital airway management: A prospective case study.

We conducted a one-year prospective study involving a prehospital Emergency Medical Service in the Netherlands to investigate the incidence of failed or difficult prehospital endotracheal intubation. During the study period the paramedics were asked to fill in a registration questionnaire after every endotracheal intubation. Of the 26,271 patient contacts, 256 endotracheal intubations were performed by paramedics in one year.