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Paramedics have reasonably good success in intubating patients out-of-hospital (85% to 97% in the literature), but many rural areas lack paramedic service. These authors studied the success and complication rates of out-of-hospital orotracheal intubation by rural basic EMTs (EMT-Bs) after didactic and mannequin training.
The study involved seven Indiana EMS systems that do not use paramedics. The 87 EMT-Bs, who had no previous intubation training, took a nine-hour, two-day paramedic-level intubation course. Over the next 14 months, 34 EMT-Bs (39%) attempted to intubate 57 patients over age 16 with absent vital signs; the success rate was 49%, ranging from 40% to 75% among the five EMS agencies reporting data. Success rates did not improve am…