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Volume 23 Supplement 2

London Trauma Conference 2014

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Anaesthesiologist-provided pre-hospital advanced airway management in children

Background

Pre-hospital advanced airway management has been named one of the top-five research priorities in physician-provided pre-hospital critical care [1]. Few studies have been made on paediatric pre-hospital advanced airway management. The aim of this study was to investigate first-pass success rates and complications related to pre-hospital advanced airway management in patients younger than 16 years of age treated by pre-hospital critical care teams in the Central Denmark Region (1.3 million inhabitants).

Method

A prospective descriptive study based on data collected from eight anaesthesiologist-staffed pre-hospital critical care teams between February 1st 2011 and November 1st 2012.

Results

Of a total of 25 000 pre-hospital critical care missions, the pre-hospital critical care anaesthesiologists attempted endotracheal intubation in 25 children, 13 of which were less than 2 years old.

In one patient, a neonate (600g birth weight), endotracheal intubation failed. The patient was managed by uneventful bag-mask ventilation.

All other children had their tracheas successfully intubated by the pre-hospital critical care anaesthesiologists.

Over-all first pass success-rate was 75.0 %. In the group of patients younger than 2 years old, first pass success-rate was 53.8 %.

The overall rate of airway management related complications was 20 % in children younger than 16 years of age and 38 % in children younger than 2 years of age (n=13). No deaths, cardiac arrests or severe bradycardia (heart rate <60) occurred in relation to pre-hospital advanced airway management.

Discussion

Compared to the adult population [2] the overall first-pass success rate is low. The complication rates (hypoxia, hypotension, aspiration and oesophageal intubations) in the paediatric population are higher than previously described in our pre-hospital advanced airway management patient population as a whole [2]. This illustrates that young children may represent a substantial pre-hospital airway management challenge even for experienced pre-hospital critical care anaesthesiologists.

References

  1. Fevang E, et al: The top five research priorities in physician-provided pre-hospital critical care: a consensus report from a European research collaboration. Scand J Trauma Resusc Emerg Med. 2011, 19: 57-10.1186/1757-7241-19-57.

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  2. Rognas L, et al: Pre-hospital advanced airway management by experienced anaesthesiologists: a prospective descriptive study. Scand J Trauma Resusc Emerg Med. 2013, 21: 58-10.1186/1757-7241-21-58.

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Correspondence to M Tarpgaard.

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This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

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Tarpgaard, M., Hansen, T. & Rognås, L. Anaesthesiologist-provided pre-hospital advanced airway management in children. Scand J Trauma Resusc Emerg Med 23 (Suppl 2), A22 (2015). https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.1186/1757-7241-23-S2-A22

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  • DOI: https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.1186/1757-7241-23-S2-A22

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