BACKGROUND The Bonfils intubation fibrescope (BIF), a rigid, straight and reusable fibreoptic device, is being used increasingly to facilitate endotracheal intubation after direct laryngoscopy has failed. We tested the hypothesis that, with the BIF compared to direct laryngoscopy, the rate of failed endotracheal intubation could be reduced in patients with a difficult airway, simulated by means...

Objective To evaluate the effectiveness and safety of using BiPAP through endotracheal tube in comatose Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) patients with hypercapnic respiratory failure. Methods This is a prospective study done at Department of Chest Medicine, Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, Karachi, during March to June 2017. It included all comatose COPD patients with hypercapn...

To the Editor: Securing the orotracheal tube is a challenge in maxillofacial surgery. Blood, saliva, and disinfectant solutions interfere with tape adhesion (1). Surgeons frequently reposition the head, further jeopardizing the security of the orotracheal tube. Several methods of securing oral endotracheal tubes have been described: anchoring the endotracheal tube with circummandibular wire (2)...

The esophageal obturator airway (EOA), esophagogastric tubular airway (EGT) and endotracheal (ET) intubation are compared as they relate to blood gases during CPR. Although statistically better levels of gases are obtained with the endotracheal tube in patients who had an EOA inserted previously, no difference in survival is noted in a separate prospective and retrospective series of patients i...

Oral care is an important feature of nursing; it is known that oropharynx is considered the main reservoir of bacterial colonization, so the removal of oral infection is a major duty of all health care providers, particularly nurses. We performed this study to explore endotracheal tube and oral care practices for mechanically ventilated patients of Jordanian intensive care nurses, and to study ...

BACKGROUND During retrograde tracheal intubation, the short distance existing between the cricothyroid membrane and vocal cords may be responsible for accidental extubation. The insertion of a catheter into the trachea before the removal of the guide wire may help to cope with this problem. This work was conducted to study the impact of such a modification on the success rate and the duration o...

OBJECTIVE Calculating weight-based drug doses for pediatric patients is difficult, with significant error potential. In the prehospital setting, few safeguards currently avert pediatric drug administration errors. We sought to determine whether use of a protocol-specific pediatric code card enables prehospital care providers to calculate more consistently accurate weight-based drug doses, volum...

Weaning from mechanical ventilation represents the period of transition from total ventilatory support to spontaneous breathing. About 70% of intubated mechanically ventilated patients are extubated on the first spontaneous breathing trial (SBT) attempt, whether by disconnection from the ventilator or after breathing at low levels of pressure support for short periods of time, such as 30 to 120...

OBJECTIVES To determine if the phenomenon of biofilm accumulation and associated microbial colonization occurs on the surface of endotracheal tubes in the region of the subglottis in neonates. METHODS Endotracheal tubes removed from 9 consecutive neonatal patients intubated for more than 12 hours were processed (range, 13 hours to 8 days). A sterile control tube was also processed. For each, ...

Received: September 9, 2008. Accepted: November 11, 2008. Corresponding author: Jong-Man Kang, M.D., Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine,, East-West Neo Medical Center, Kyung Hee University, 149, Sangil-dong Gangdong-gu, Seoul 134-090, Korea. Tel: 82-2-440-6193, Fax: 82-2-787-7808, E-mail: [email protected] Copyright c Korean Society of Anesthesiologists, 2009 Fig. 1. Photograph of a M...