Internal and emergency medicine
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Comment Letter Case Reports
Unexpected hypertension associated to silent renal failure in a "healthy" young woman.
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Comparative Study Observational Study
Comparison of video laryngoscopy to direct laryngoscopy for intubation of patients with difficult airway characteristics in the emergency department.
The objective of the study is to compare the efficacy of video laryngoscopy (VL) to direct laryngoscopy (DL) on the first pass intubation success of patients with difficult airway characteristics (DACs) in the emergency department (ED). Over a 6-year period, between July 1 2007 and June 30 2013, all intubations performed in an academic ED were recorded in a continuous quality improvement (CQI) database by the operators. The CQI form included information such as patient demographics, operator level of training, device(s) used, number of attempts and outcome of each attempt. ⋯ After adjusting for potential confounders, VL was associated with higher odds of first pass success for patients with no DACs (aOR 2.0, 95 % CI 1.2-3.3), one DAC (aOR 3.2, 95 % CI 1.9-5.6), two DACs (aOR 2.3, 95 % CI 1.1-4.9), and three or more DACs (aOR 2.9, 95 % CI 1.5-5.5). In patients with DACs, VL was associated with a higher first pass success than DL. VL is recommended as the primary intubating device for patients with predicted difficult airways in the ED.