Spirometric Detection of Esophageal Intubation

In endotracheal intubation, it is essential that the trachea is intubated and not the esophagus. In suboptimal situations (outside an operating theatre), malpositioning of the endotracheal tube occurs frequently and is often fatal. The diagnostic tools that are available in the operating theatre are not appropriate for out-of-hospital situations because of several reasons. Moreover, these methods mostly take some time to provide the desired information and don't have optimal specificity and sensitivity. In order to allow fast diagnosis of this potentially fatal complication, we have developed a fully-automatic detection device to diagnose endotracheal tube malpositioning within 2 seconds. A high sensitivity/specificity of the algorithm for waveform-analysis was demonstrated in healthy patients and patients with pulmonary diseases (decreased pulmonary compliance). A new stand-alone device with integrated sensors and microprocessor was developed that gives immediate diagnosis, and stores data for subsequent research purpose. This device will be evaluated in perioperative situations to demonstrate the high sensitivity and specificity in patients in a clinical setting.