5th Edition of Walls Manual of Emergency Airway Management Keeps The Difficult Airway Course On the Leading Edge

The Difficult Airway Course™ prides itself on staying updated on all studies and sciences in the field of airway management. Keeping with this practice, The Difficult Airway Course: Emergency and The Difficult Airway Course: Critical Care will be using the new fifth edition of The Walls Manual of Emergency Airway Management. Edited by Calvin Brown III M.D., National Course Director for The Difficult Airway Course: Emergency, and faculty members John Sakles M.D., and Nathan Mick M.D., the new text contains many significant updates.

Comprehensive evidence-based information has been added to all chapters throughout the manual, specifically pertaining to rapid sequence intubation, prehospital management, the hemodynamically unstable patient, and safe extubation of the at-risk patient. There are also new chapters for EMS , all written by  current or former  members of our EMS faculty, containing two dozen new images.

John Sakles also notes that a prominent change is focusing on managing the physiology of intubation. “Previous versions [of the Manual] focused on the anatomically difficult airway,” he says. “Now we have that covered and are onto the next big frontier.”

Updating the textbook, and the research that entails, keeps the course fresh, ensuring everyone learns from the newest evidence. “Our understanding of the best practices for emergency airway management changes with available evidence,” says Calvin Brown. “Things we used to do 20 years ago are not helpful today. This happens from time to time. So as evidence sheds light on old practices, we advance to new practices. That’s why it’s important to always use new textbooks.”

Sakles adds, “Sometimes a lot of things make sense at the time, but you don’t know if they are beneficial or not until you study them. Sometimes we learn that they are actually harmful, so we have to look at new literature.”

Our faculty is, and will continue to be, on the forefront of airway management practice and research, keeping the course – and the textbook – up-to-date with the latest evidence-based developments now and in the future.

You can purchase the 5th edition of the Walls Manual of Emergency Airway Management by clicking here.