Difficult intubation.

Abstract

The incidence of failed intubation among experienced anaesthesiologists is approximately 1 /2300 in a general surgical population, and 1/300 in obstetric anaesthesia [l]. Inability to ventilate the patient because of upper airway obstruction, leading to inadequate oxygenation, and, ultimately, neurologic damage or death, is the single most common cause of serious anaesthetic related complications [21. Nevertheless, such events are extremely uncommon, occumng less than once in every 10.000 anaesthetics 131. Despite its rare occurrence, virtually every anaesthesiologist will sometime during his/her career run into some kind of "cannot intubate, cannot ventilate"situation. To avoid this, be it anatomical or pathological conditions that predispose for a difficult intubation, the anaesthesiologist must be able to identify the problem and choose an appropriate strategy beforehand.