BACKGROUND Airway management, an essential component of care for patients receiving mechanical ventilation, is multifaceted and includes oral hygiene and suctioning, endotracheal suctioning, and care of endotracheal tubes. Registered nurses and respiratory care personnel often share responsibilities for airway management. Knowledge of current practices can help facilitate evidence-based practic...

BACKGROUND Critically ill patients who need mechanical ventilation require endotracheal suctioning. Guidelines recommend coarse crackles over the trachea and/or the presence of a sawtooth pattern on the flow-volume loop of the ventilator waveform as the best indicators. OBJECTIVE To determine clinical cues for endotracheal suctioning in patients who require mechanical ventilation. METHODS A...

Various manufacturing defects of endotracheal tubes are encountered in anaesthesia practice. One of the important defects of an endotracheal tube is that a partial or complete obstruction can be potentially life-threatening. Manufacturing defects may not be ascertainable by routine inspection. In this case report, we report a partial airway obstruction caused by a plastic membrane in the connec...

Background Easier to perform than the conventional procedure, mini-tracheostomy (MT) is widely used in the operating room or intensive care unit to remove sputum or other obstructions of the upper airway. This option, however, does carry the risk of various complications, including malposition, disposition, bleeding, and subcutaneous emphysema. Here, we report a case of endotracheal tube obstru...

Concerns about the work of breathing imposed by the endotracheal tube have led clinicians to routinely use pressure support to overcome this resistive component. More recently, ventilator manufacturers have introduced systems to automatically overcome endotracheal tube resistance, regardless of tube diameter or patient demand for flow. Despite the theoretical advantages, neither method appears ...

If the endotracheal route is to be used for administration of epinephrine, the limited available evidence suggests that the currently recommended dose of 0.01 mg/kg is likely to be too low to be effective. Given the paucity of high-quality clinical data regarding endotracheal epinephrine, the intravenous route should be used as soon as venous access is established. Given the complete lack of cl...

introduction : confirmation of proper endotracheal tube placement is one of the most important and lifesaving issues of tracheal intubation. the present study was aimed to evaluate the accuracy of tracheal ultrasonography by emergency residents in this regard.   method : this was a prospective, cross sectional study for evaluating the diagnostic accuracy of ultrasonography in endotracheal tube ...