Novel use of an exchange catheter to facilitate intubation with an Aintree catheter in a tall patient with a predicted difficult airway: A case report

Shaun E. Gruenbaum, Benjamin F. Gruenbaum, Sergey Tsaregorodtsev, Michael Dubilet, Israel Melamed, Alexander Zlotnik

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

8 Scopus citations

Abstract

Introduction. The Aintree intubating catheter (Cook® Medical Inc., Bloomington, IN, USA) has been shown to successfully facilitate difficult intubations when other methods have failed. The Aintree intubating catheter (Cook® Medical Inc., Bloomington, IN, USA) has a fixed length of 56 cm, and it has been suggested in the literature that it may be too short for safe use in patients who are tall. Case presentation. We present the case of a 32-year-old, 180 cm tall Caucasian woman with a predicted difficult airway who presented to our facility for an emergency cesarean section. After several failed intubation attempts via direct laryngoscopy, an airway was established with a laryngeal mask airway. After delivery of a healthy baby, our patient's condition necessitated tracheal intubation. A fiber-optic bronchoscope loaded with an Aintree intubating catheter (Cook® Medical Inc., Bloomington, IN, USA) was passed through the laryngeal mask airway into the trachea until just above the carina, but was too short to safely allow for the passage of an endotracheal tube. Conclusions: We present a novel technique in which the Aintree intubating catheter (Cook® Medical Inc., Bloomington, IN, USA) was replaced with a longer (100 cm) exchange catheter, over which an endotracheal tube was passed successfully into the trachea.

Original languageEnglish
Article number108
JournalJournal of Medical Case Reports
Volume6
DOIs
StatePublished - 16 Apr 2012

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Medicine

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