A survey of current practice of difficult airway management and equipment in pediatric anesthesia

Abstract

Aim: Airway management is one of the key areas of pediatric anesthesia practice. In this study, we aimed to investigate the availability of equipment for difficult airways in pediatric anesthesia and to increase the awareness on the subject among anesthesiologists. Material and Method: The survey was carried out using the forms.google.com. Our questionnaire was forwarded to the members on the internet by the Turkish Society of Anesthesiology and Reanimation. Anesthesiologists working in Turkey and willing to join the survey were included in the study. Results: The mean age of the 390 participants who completed our questionnaire was 39.40±7.26 years. The majority (34.6%) of the participants were working for training and research hospitals; 35.4% had been working for 1-5 years; 53.1% had attended a training course on airway management. The frequency of pediatric anesthesia every day was 32.8% and 46% of the participants had been administering pediatric anesthesia to few pediatric patients each week. A special kit of equipment for difficult airway management was available to 35.4%. The classical LMA was most frequently used equipment (95.6%). While 40.8% of the participants had encountered difficult airway in 1-5 pediatric patients, 7.9% also had the previous experience of an emergency surgical airway. Discussion: Our study has determined that the incidence of emergency surgical airway experience was low despite the high risk of encountering difficult airway management in pediatric anesthesiology. We believe that the success rates in difficult airway management would be increased by starting training courses with frequent periodicity on pediatric difficult airway management at different centers in our country, by widening the availability of required equipment and by increasing experience.