VACTERL syndrome presents many challenges related to anesthesia management due to multiple congenital malformations that may include vertebral, cardiac, tracheo-esophageal, renal and extremity anomalies. Continue reading
Difficulties or failure in airway management are common factors leading to death and brain damage as a direct result of anesthesia. Prediction of the difficult airway enables the anesthetists to prepare for this challenging clinical scenario. Although the ability to predict accurately a difficult airway preoperatively would be of great value, it is evident from the literature that no single airway assessment can reliably predict a difficult airway. The purpose of this paper is to define the difficult airway and to review the current literature on methods used for prediction of difficult airway.
Continue readingThe goal of this observesional study was to evaluate the improvement of the visual view of the la-rynx in neonates, infants and children with difficult airway using the Airtraq® Optical Laryngosco-pe, compared with visual views of the first conventional laryngoscopy with Macintosh blade. We studied clinical and/or laryngoscopic manifestations of difficult airway and advanced airway mana-gement of nine consecutive pediatric patients (2 neonates, 5 infants and 2 children) admitted from 1/1/2011 to 31/08/2012 for elective/emergency surgery or diagnostic procedure under general anes-thesia.
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