Video Laryngoscopy Increases Intubation Success for Nonphysician Prehospital Providers

While there have been several meta-analyses of video versus direct laryngoscopy in the hospital setting, none have focused on emergency medical services providers. The wide availability of portable video laryngoscopes has given rise to the question of whether, and by whom, they should be used in the prehospital setting. These authors performed a meta-analysis of studies that compared intubation success rates with video versus direct laryngoscopy in the prehospital setting.

A total of eight studies involving 3552 providers were included. Owing to significant heterogeneity among studies, the authors did not report pooled estimates of overall and first-pass success across all studies. However, stratification by provider type reduced heterogenei…