comparison of intubation using VL3 video laryngoscope with and without stylet: A prospective randomized study

Video laryngoscopes are an important advancement in the practice of clinical anaesthesia. Their role is now well established in difficult or failed direct laryngoscopy and also as an educational tool. These are the devices with a video camera positioned near the tip of the laryngoscope blade, thus allowing to ’see the corners’ of the upper airway obviating the need to align the airway axes to obtain a laryngeal view which invariably provide a better glottic view than direct laryngoscope, however this does not assure an easy intubation. There can be difficulty encountered to direct the endotracheal tube towards the glottic opening leading to an increased time to intubation. To overcome this, the use of stylet is found to be very effective in facilitating orotracheal intubation using video laryngoscope.

The GlideRite rigid stylet is a commercially available stylet with a preformed curvature and is designed to facilitate intubation with a GlideScope video laryngoscope. However, it can be used for other video laryngoscopes. The VL3 video laryngoscope (HugeMed, Shenzhen) is a new portable device for performing endotracheal intubation. It weighs 350g and has a 3.5inch display with a 2.0 Megapixel camera near the tip of the blade. It is available in neonatal, pediatric, and adult sizes in both reusable and disposable versions.

There is paucity of literature evaluating VL3 video laryngoscope and hence the present study was designed to evaluate its role in facilitating orotracheal intubation with and without the use of GlideRite rigid stylet. We hypothesized that the use of stylet will lead to a faster intubation with VL3 video laryngoscope than without stylet.