Background: Management of airway is central to the Practice of anaesthesia. One of the anaesthesiologist fundamental roles is to maintain a patent airway at a all times.Maintaining a patent airway is essential for adequate oxygenation and ventilation and failure to do so, even for a brief period of time, can be life threatening. Recently, thyromental height test (TMHT) has been proposed as one of the highly sensitive and specific bedside tests to predict difficult airway.Objective: To assess the predictivity of thyromental height test in comparison to modified Mallampati test.Methods: This cross sectional study was carried out in Anesthesiology department of ISMCH during the period of January, 2015 to December, 2016. A total number of 139 consecutive patients scheduled for elective surgical procedure under general anaesthesia requiring intubation having American Society of Anesthesiologists grading I-II. Statistical analyses of the results were obtained by SPSS-20. Sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, positive predictive value and negative predictive value of Thyromental height test and Modified mallampati scoring in diagnosis of difficult airway were calculated.Results: Most (74.4) of the patients belonged to age ≤50 years. Male to female ratio was 1.01:1. Majority 91(65.5%) patients had thyromental height of ≥50 mm. In the diagnosis of difficult airway, Thyromental height test was 92.7% sensitivity, 93.5% specificity, 93.5% accuracy and 85.4% positive predictive values, 97.8% negative predictive value, 13.1% positive likelihood ratio, 0.05 negative likelihood ratio. On the other hand Modified mallampati scoring was 48.8% sensitivity, 92.7% specificity, 79.1% accuracy, 75.0% positive predictive values, 80.2% negative predictive value, 6.7% positive likelihood ratio, 0.55 negative likelihood ratio for prediction of difficult airway.Conclusions: It can be concluded that the thyromental height is useful diagnostic modality for predicting difficult airway.Bangladesh Journal of Medical Science Vol.17(3) 2018 p.455-461

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