The hospital difficult airway team: experience and implications for patient care

Abstract

The difficult airway involves the complex interaction between patient factors, the clinical setting and the practitioner’s skills (Apfelbaum in Anesthesiology 118(2):251–70, 2013 and Mark et al. in Anesth Analg 121(1):127–139, 2015). It can also be a result of preparedness and system failures. Our institution developed a protocol to enhance emergency airway management in settings outside of the operating theatre—the difficult airway (DA) team. The aims of this report are to perform a retrospective review to describe the patient profiles as well as our difficult airway code workflow, and to identify preliminary patterns within DAC activations over an 18-month period (September 2013 to November 2015) in a tertiary university hospital. We believe that these findings may aid institutions in establishing a difficult airway protocol or refining existing airway code workflows. Institutional board approval was granted for medical record review.