Ultrasound Parameters to Predict Difficult Videolaryngoscopy

The management of the upper airway and the diagnosis of pathological conditions are essential skills for any doctor especially for Anaesthesiologist, ER physician, or Intensive Care physician. Because an inadequate airway management continues to be an important contributor to patient mortality and morbidity, any tool that can improve it should be considered as an addition to conventional clinical evaluation.

Unfortunately, most of the clinical parameters that should allow us to assess a potential difficult airway, do not always lead us to an adequate prediction, that is why US(Ultrasound) is use as an emerging tool in many fields, is also gathering strength in this search for a definitive predictor parameter.

Ultrasound has many obvious advantages (safe,fast, repeatable, portable, widely available and gives dynamic images in real time).

Sonographic studies are operator-dependent and although the identification of basic structures could be acquired with only a few hours of training, but more complex studies require a learning curve of months or even years. The high frequency linear probe (5-14 MHz) is probably the most suitable for the airway because images are of superficial structures (within 0-5 cm below the skin surface).

The growing academic interest in the use of US to look for predictors of difficult airway is centred mainly on measurements at the level of pretracheal tissues. But the greatest limitation of these studies is the disparity of the fat distribution that exists between different ethnic groups and and sexes, and the lack of standardization method in patient´s intubation conditions.