MS#15 Airtraq advantage for presbyopic anaesthetists

Anaesthesia, 2010,65,pages 306-315
Y. Imashuku,  Tsukinowa-Cho, Otsu, Shiga, Japan

We investigated the time required for an accurate reading of the Landolt ring mark (diameter approximately 2.5 mm) for visual acuity testing in front of the vocal cords of an intubation training manikin.

We measured the time from moving the eyes from an anaesthetic monitor placed approximately 2 m away to reading the Landort ring mark in front of the glottis exposed by an Airtraq or Macintosh laryngoscope.

Less time was required to reach the correct answer using the Airtraq compared with the Macintosh laryngoscope in the presbyopic group (2.8 (0.7) s vs 6.2 (3.2) s, respectively, p < 0.05 using Student’s t test).

These results suggest that in the presbyopic group, the magnified observation using the Airtraq makes it faster to read a Landolt ring mark placed in front of the vocal cords compared with direct observation using Macintosh laryngoscope.

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