CS#43 Airtraq vs Macintosh for nasal intubation

Anaesthesia 2012, 67, 132–138
G. St. Mont,1 I. Biesler,1 R. Pfo¨rtner,2 C. Mohr3 and H. Groeben

The authors prospectively compared tracheal intubation efficiency of the Airtraq for nasotracheal intubation vs that of the Macintosh laryngoscope in 200 patients.

Depending on pre-operative airway evaluation, the patients were allocated to expected easy or difficult intubation groups, on the basis of mouth opening 2.5 cm, modified Mallampati score of 4, history of difficult intubation, obvious tumour or swelling. Patients were randomly allocated to the Macintosh or nasotracheal Airtraq technique. All easy intubations were successfully performed with the respective technique. In the expected difficult intubation group, the success rate was higher, the glottis view was better, mean (SD) intubation time was shorter and the number of optimising manoeuvres was reduced with the nasotracheal Airtraq compared with the Macintosh, respectively.

For difficult nasal intubations, the nasotracheal Airtraq is more effective than the Macintosh laryngoscope

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