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Assessment of endotracheal tube intubation. Review of existing scales
Affiliations- Research Assistant, Cleveland Clinic Department of Anesthesiology Outcomes Research, Cleveland, United States
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Abstract
Due to the complications associated with endotracheal intubation, contraindications should be assessed prior to initiating the procedure when possible. Several scales have been created to assess the ease of intubation. These intubation scales use numerous scoring systems combined with subjective assessments to provide a quantifiable suggestion for the patients difficulty of tracheal intubation. While there is no formal definition of what comprises a difficult intubation, some parameters include effort, number of attempts and complications. Some of the most common scales to assess this difficulty include the Mallampati score, the Cormack Lehane scale, the intubation difficulty scale, the level of difficulty of intubation, as well as the simplified airway risk index. There have been several other proposed methods as well that are less frequently used contributing to even less cohesion in the evaluation of airways.
Abstract
Due to the complications associated with endotracheal intubation, contraindications should be assessed prior to initiating the procedure when possible. Several scales have been created to assess the ease of intubation. These intubation scales use numerous scoring systems combined with subjective assessments to provide a quantifiable suggestion for the patients difficulty of tracheal intubation. While there is no formal definition of what comprises a difficult intubation, some parameters include effort, number of attempts and complications. Some of the most common scales to assess this difficulty include the Mallampati score, the Cormack Lehane scale, the intubation difficulty scale, the level of difficulty of intubation, as well as the simplified airway risk index. There have been several other proposed methods as well that are less frequently used contributing to even less cohesion in the evaluation of airways.
Keywords
endotracheal tube, intubation, grading scales
About this articleTitle
Assessment of endotracheal tube intubation. Review of existing scales
Journal
Disaster and Emergency Medicine Journal
Issue
Pages
91-93
Published online
2017-05-24
Page views
1908
Article views/downloads
3557
DOI
Bibliographic record
Disaster Emerg Med J 2017;2(2):91-93.
Keywords
endotracheal tube
intubation
grading scales
Authors
Logan Glosser
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