An Update on Ultrasonography as a Tool for Airway Management

Pp: 15-30 (16)

* (Excluding Mailing and Handling)

Abstract

Because inadequate airway management continues to be an important contributor to serious complications, ultrasound is an emerging tool that has many obvious advantages (safe, fast, repeatable, portable, widely available, and gives dynamic images in real time) that we can use for patient safety. In the upper airway, there are many uses for the ultrasound, for example, oesophageal intubation, adequate placement of the endotracheal tube, selection of the appropriate size of conventional tube and double-lumen tube, adequate placement of supraglottic devices, predictors of difficult airway, predictors of post-extubation stridor risk, prandial status, nerve blocks, or percutaneous tracheostomy.

Keywords: Air-mucosal interface, Airway management, Difficult airway, Cricothyroid Membrane, Hypoechoic, Hyperechoic, Intubation, Intratracheal, Laryngoscopy, Predictors, Pretracheal tissues, Skin-to-epiglottis distance, Skin to hyoid distance, Tracheostomy, Thyrohyoid Membrane, Ultrasonography.