Outpatient Surgery Magazine - Subscribers

OR Excellence Award Winners - September 2017 - Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.

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Video Laryngoscopes For intubations, a new standard of care is within sight. V ideo laryngoscopy is poised to replace conventional laryn- goscopy as the intubation method of choice. It consistently lets you visualize intubation, something direct laryngoscopy often fails to do. It also improves our clinical documentation with video records. Stored videos of intubations aren't just useful to subsequent care providers who can use them to see in advance what kinds of difficul- ties they might encounter. They're also useful to practitioners who want to improve their techniques. Laryngoscopy is so task-focused that we often don't recognize how much we can improve by better understanding how certain difficulties might have been circumvented. Here are a few considerations to keep in mind if you're shopping for a video laryngoscope. • Familiarity may breed contempt. The video laryngoscope that seems most familiar, or most compatible with your experience in direct laryngoscopy, isn't necessarily going to be the best choice. If you're not experienced with video laryngoscopy, the best choice depends in part on your willingness to learn new techniques. Some video scopes are shaped differently than conventional laryngoscopes. Hyper-angulated blades enable viewing that might not otherwise be possible, but they require a somewhat different technique than con- ventional Macintosh blades. If you're not prepared to learn the differ- ences, you may end up frustrated, because the scope isn't providing a dramatic improvement over direct laryngoscopy. • Take the time to train. Your anesthesia providers will need proper training when they begin using video laryngoscopes. Being an experi- enced direct laryngoscopist doesn't necessarily confer expertise when using a video scope. 1 3 2 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 7 Thinking of Buying … Richard Cooper, BSc, MSc, MD, FRCPC

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