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A recent study successfully developed a comprehensive taxonomy of 13 performance errors related to laryngoscopy during emergency intubation.

The following is a summary of “A taxonomy of key performance errors for emergency intubation,” published in the November 2023 issue of Emergency Medicine by Weingart, et al.

For a study, researchers sought to establish a taxonomy of errors affecting the optimal procedural performance of emergency intubation, focusing on errors during laryngoscopy.

A prospective, observational study was conducted involving a convenience sample of deidentified laryngoscopy recordings of emergency department intubations previously flagged for suboptimal technique. The videos were coded for the presence of 13 predetermined performance errors. Errors were categorized into three groups: errors of structure recognition during laryngoscope insertion, vallecula manipulation errors, and device delivery errors.

A total of 100 intubation attempts were reviewed. The most common error observed was inadequate lifting force with the blade tip in the vallecula, leading to a decrease in the percent of glottic openings, occurring in 45% of attempts. The least common performance error was prematurely removing the laryngoscope during bougie placement, occurring in only 9% of the videos.

The study successfully developed a comprehensive taxonomy of 13 performance errors related to laryngoscopy during emergency intubation. Further research was recommended to explore incorporating these errors into emergency airway training and the airway review process.

Source: sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0735675723004539