Airway Scope and Macintosh Laryngoscope for Tracheal Intubation in Patients Lying on the Ground

Pre-hospital intubation is often required in sub-optimal conditions, such as in patients lying on the ground. Direct laryngoscopy and intubation of a patient lying supine on the ground is difficult because the intubator's head is far above the head of the patient. It is thus tricky to align the intubator's visual axis with the patient's tracheal axis. The Airway Scope is a new laryngoscope designed to facilitate intubation without requiring alignment of the oral, pharyngeal, and tracheal axes. We thus tested the hypothesis that the intubation with the Airway Scope is faster than the Macintosh laryngoscope in subjects lying on the ground.