Prehospital Trauma Airway Management: An NAEMSP Position Statement and Resource Document

Figures & data

Figure 1. Prehospital adult trauma airway management algorithm (19). Adapted from Brown CVR, Inaba K, Shatz DV, Moore EE, Ciesla D, Sava JA, Alam HB, Brasel K, Vercruysse G, Sperry JL, et al. Western Trauma Association critical decisions in trauma: airway management in adult trauma patients. Trauma Surg Acute Care Open. 2020;5(1):e000539. This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY- NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non- commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non- commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Table 1. Prehospital trauma airway management research opportunities. Modified from Brown et al. (19).

Acceptable number of intubation attempts prior to use of alternative or surgical airway

Effect of multiple airway attempts on patient outcomes

Ideal pharmacological agents and doses for definitive airway placement in trauma patients of various types (e.g., traumatic brain injury, hemorrhagic shock)

Ideal pharmacological agents and depth of post-intubation sedation in various trauma patient types

Optimal endotracheal tube sizing for prehospital endotracheal intubation

Risk/benefit of endotracheal intubation prehospital vs. in-hospital

Optimal airway management choice based on time to definitive care, specific type of trauma, hemodynamic status, patient characteristics

Optimal method of achieving and maintaining clinician competency in various airway management strategies (e.g., bag-valve-mask, supraglottic airway, endotracheal intubation, surgical airway)

Adapted from Brown CVR, Inaba K, Shatz DV, Moore EE, Ciesla D, Sava JA, Alam HB, Brasel K, Vercruysse G, Sperry JL, et al. Western Trauma Association critical decisions in trauma: airway management in adult trauma patients. Trauma Surg Acute Care Open. 2020;5(1):e000539. This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY- NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non- commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non- commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Brown CVR, Inaba K, Shatz DV, Moore EE, Ciesla D, Sava JA, Alam HB, Brasel K, Vercruysse G, Sperry JL, et al. Western Trauma Association critical decisions in trauma: airway management in adult trauma patients. Trauma Surg Acute Care Open. 2020;5(1):e000539. doi:https://doi.org/10.1136/tsaco-2020-000539.

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