Airway in the Newborn Patient

Understanding the airway in a newborn patient is a priority, in view of the anatomical and physiological unique characteristics which they have that don’t repeat themselves through a person’s life: they only last the first years of a person’s life. These characteristics are necessary for understanding and manipulating the normal or complicated airway. Newborns usually require urgent surgeries, many of them premature with low birth weight and hemodynamically unstable. The correct manipulation of the airway is fundamental in every newborn. Problems during airway manipulation in the newborn are an important cause of morbidity, oxygen desaturation and secondary hypoxia. They cause the most frequent complication in the pediatric population, and are inversely proportional to the child’s age. When the gestation weeks are fewer and the weight is lower, it is more complicated to manipulate the airway.