Anesthesiology Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Anesthesiology, including details on clinical anesthesiology, evidence based practice, techniques.

Evaluation of four manikins as simulators for teaching airway management procedures specified in the Difficult Airway Society guidelines, and other advanced airway skills.

Jordan GM, Silsby J, Bayley G, Cook TM, Difficult Airway Society

Department of Anaesthesia, Royal United Hospital, Combe Park, Bath BA1 3NG, UK.

Ten volunteers evaluated the performance of four currently available manikins: Airway Management Trainer, Airway Trainer, Airsim and Bill 1 as simulators for the 16 procedures described in the Difficult Airway Society Guidelines (DAS techniques) and eight other advanced airway techniques (non-DAS techniques), by scoring and ranking each manikin and procedure. Manikin performance was unequal (p < 0.0001 for both SCORE and RANK data for both DAS and non-DAS techniques). Post hoc analysis ranked the manikins for DAS techniques as: 1st Laerdal, 2nd Trucorp, 3rd equal VBM and Ambu. For non-DAS techniques, the ranking was: 1st equal Laerdal and Trucorp, 3rd equal VBM and Ambu. The power to discriminate for individual procedures was considerably lower but for 15 of 16 DAS techniques and 6 of 8 non-DAS techniques, manikin performance differed significantly. Post hoc tests showed significant performance differences between individual manikins for 10 DAS procedures, with the Laerdal manikin performing best.

Published 14 June 2007 in Anaesthesia, 62(7): 708-12.
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