F.R.O.N.T. Formula for Pre-operative Airway Assessment and Documentation

The F.R.O.N.T. formula for pre-operative airway assessment and documentation Background: Prediction of difficult airway is one of the most important challenges before general anesthesia. Although in recent decades different scoring systems have been for the preoperative assessment of their sensitivity and specificity in predicting a difficult airway remains moderate. Recently, the calculation of composite scores using different formulae has been proposed as the most sensitive one. The aim of the present work was to test the clinical usefulness of the FRONT score, a recently developed scoring system. Methods: This study was a multi-center, inter-observer, prospective and double-blind investigation that included 976 patients from two university centers: 250 from the University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and 726 from the University of Debrecen, Hungary. The preoperative evaluation of the patients was performed by a preoperative team of anesthesiologists (team A) who evaluated and scored the expected difficulty of the management of the airway. An intraoperative team of evaluators (team B) working independently from team A, performed the actual instrumentation of the airway and scored the actual findings. Both teams used the FRONT scoring system and worked independently from each other to ensure blinded assessment. Statistical analysis of the preoperative and intraoperative FRONT scores were performed post hoc.