Tracheal Intubation and Prehospital Emergency Setting

Emergency Medicine, Tracheal Intubation Morbidity

difficult intubation, prehospital emergency, risk factors

In prehospital emergency setting, tracheal intubation is a frequent procedure (8% of interventions). Its objective is to control and protect upper airways and to optimize ventilation and oxygenation in patients with life-threatening distress. Intubation is a technical procedure which is associated with few difficulties with, in rare cases, the impossibility to do it. There are specificities of the out-of-hospital emergency with some risk factors that have been recognized in this context as well as the impossibility of assessing predictive factors of difficult intubation linked to the patient. The objective of the investigators was to describe the quality of tracheal intubation in prehospital emergency setting.

National and international guidelines have the objective to optimize the airway management modalities and to minimize the risk of complications in relation to this procedure. In contrast to the operating-room where intubation is performed daily in standardized conditions, in prehospital emergency setting, the environment and circumstances are variable and have an impact on the gesture as has been demonstrated. However, there are few studies about this issue, and these one are relatively ancients although that orotracheal intubation procedures in emergency are now well defined and that the algorithms for the management of difficult intubation have been well diffused in the emergency area these last 10 years. The last study about this topic has been published in 2012 involving more than 600 patients included between 2008 and 2010. Difficult intubation rate, defined with a number of attempts over 2 or the use of an alternative technic was 11%. Another study with more than 2000 patients had found a rate of 6%. A study comparing the intubation difficulty scale score between two types of blades in 800 patients had found a rate of difficult intubation from 9 to 12%. The algorithms of the management of difficult intubation were largely based on the result of studies performed by anesthesiologists in operating ward. The objective will be to describe the quality of intubation and to measure risk factors of difficult intubation. The investigators are going to collect data about all patients intubated in prehospital emergency setting with the objective to measure the difficult intubation rate and to describe variables associated with difficult intubation. The follow up will be restricted to the area of prehospital emergency setting.

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