Anaesthesia and intensive care
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Anaesth Intensive Care · May 1991
Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative Study Clinical TrialArterial desaturation during induction in healthy adults: should preoxygenation be a routine?
We studied the haemoglobin saturation of one hundred healthy patients equally divided into two groups. Group 1 patients received three minutes of preoxygenation prior to thiopentone induction followed by inhalational anaesthetics. ⋯ None of the patients in Group 1 showed any arterial oxygen desaturation during the five minutes of the induction period, whereas 21 patients in Group 2 showed definite desaturation (P less than 0.005), of which fifteen patients had a saturation of 90% or less (P less than 0.005) and six had a saturation of 85% or less. Since those were healthy patients and the anaesthetics were given by experienced anaesthetists, we concluded that some form of preoxygenation should be used in all patients receiving general anaesthesia.
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An adaptor has been devised which, when fitted between the handle and the blade of a standard Macintosh design laryngoscope, allows the angle to be adjusted to several clinically useful positions. An appropriate angle can be easily found either for introduction of the blade, laryngoscopy or exploration of the pharynx through a simple mechanism operated by the hand holding the laryngoscope.