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Guidelines For The Optimal Assessment Of Airway To Predict Difficult Intubation, Morgan Kleinfelder

Doctor of Nursing Practice Scholarly Projects

Managing the airway is the cornerstone of anesthesia care. However, difficult airway or intubation is not clearly defined. A major complication with a difficult airway is a cannot intubate, cannot ventilate (CICV) situation, which is reported to be as high as 10%. In addition, according to the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) Closed Claim Study, "Adverse respiratory events are the most common type of injury, with difficult intubation [DI] and ventilation contributing to most of the cases. Twenty-eight percent of all anesthesia deaths are related to a CICV situation. As anesthesia evolves, basic airway assessments were developed and include mallampati …