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Controversy persists regarding prehospital airway management, with positions ranging from abandoning intubation to staffing emergency medical services with highly trained providers. To assess the success of prehospital advanced airway management by anesthesiologists, researchers designed an Utstein-style prospective descriptive study of eight critical care teams in Denmark, each including an experienced anesthesiologist.
Among 636 intubation attempts over 21 months, the overall success rate was 99.7%, and the incidence of difficult intubation (defined as requiring more than 1 pass) was 22.4%. Intubation was successful on the first pass in 86% of rapid-sequence intubations (RSIs) versus 78% of all intubations. The incidence of complications f…