Casey et al. Win 2019 Airway Article of the Year Award

Airway Management Education Center, the creators of The Difficult Airway Course™, hosted the eighth annual “Airway Article of the Year” award show as a live webinar on December 12, 2019.  Webinar host, Calvin Brown III, MD presented four articles as finalists.  The nominees were selected from among all the articles covered during the Airway Management Research Update webinars held in 2019.  The content and merits of each article were presented, and the winner was chosen by a vote of the on-line audience during the show.  The recorded show is available at www.airwayworld.com/webinars and as a podcast on iTunes (Airway World Podcasts) and at www.airwayworld.com/airway-podcasts.

The 2019 Nominees

The nominees for this honor were:

• Casey J, et al. Bag-Mask Ventilation during Tracheal Intubation of Critically Ill Adults. N Engl J Med 2019 380:811-82.

• Carlson J, et al. Procedural Experience with Intubation: Results from a National Emergency Medicine Group. Ann Emerg Med 2019 Dec

• Lembersky O et al. Factors Associated with Post-Intubation Sedation After Emergency Department Intubation: A Report from The National Emergency Airway Registry. Am J Emerg Med.2019 May 6

• Caputo N, et al. Use of End Tidal Oxygen Monitoring to Assess Preoxygenation During Rapid Sequence Intubation in the Emergency Department. Ann Emerg Med. 2019 Sep

The 2019 Winner

The winner of the 2019 “Airway Article of the Year” is Bag-Mask Ventilation during Tracheal Intubation of Critically Ill Adults by Jonathan D. Casey MD, David R. Janz MD, Derek W. Russell MD, Derek J. Vonderhaar MD, Aaron M. Joffe DO, Kevin M. Dischert MD, Ryan M. Brown MD, Aline N. Zouk MD, Swati Gulati MD BS, Brent E. Heideman MD, Michael G. Lester MD, Alexandra H. Toporek MD, Itay Bentov MD PhD, Wesley H. Self MD, Todd W. Rice MD and Matthew W. Semler MD, for the PreVent Investigators and the Pragmatic Critical Care Research Group.

In this study, researchers investigated whether careful mask ventilation could mitigate desaturation (without increasing aspiration) during rapid sequence intubation in critically ill patients suffering from hypoxemic respiratory failure.  This multicenter, randomized trial found that patients receiving bag-mask ventilation had lower occurrences of severe hypoxemia and higher oxygen saturation levels than those who did not receive ventilation. Although high-risk aspirators were excluded from the study and there lacked a standardized approach to pre-oxygenation, these results make us rethink our rigid stance that, in the absence of hypoxia, RSI is a non-bagging procedure.

According to Dr. Brown, “This multicenter randomized controlled trial suggests that it is safe to carefully and deliberately provide positive pressure ventilation to patients undergoing RSI who are difficult to preoxygenate or at risk for peri-intubation hypoxemia provided the aspiration risk is low.”

Dr. Casey’s study hit home for the audience, who selected he and his team for this honor.  Congratulations to all involved!

Questions about Airway World or the Quarterly Airway Management Research Updates can be sent to Terry T. Steele at tsteele@theairwaysite.com.