Airway Choices in an Era of Many Choices

This video by Dr Reuben Strayer as part of the ALL NYC EM Conference for 2021 discusses Airway Choices - In the Era of Many Choices.

This is one of the best talks on Airway management in the ED I've heard. I feel that normally these talks were only available to those who attended the conference in person, but thanks to COVID the whole video is online for us to watch and re-watch.

There are numerous videos in that conference that are very educational and I highly recommend watching the entire conference stream. As often with YouTube videos watching it slightly faster at 1.25x using the cogwheel on the bottom right will help you save time without compromising on understanding.

Dr Reuben Strayer's Airway Talk starts at 1:27:20

The key take home points from the video:

• You can not predict the difficult airway
• Standard Geometry Video Laryngoscopy (SG-VL) with bougie should be the choice for the 1st attempt for most beginners. In practice this is usually a CMAC with bougie.
• Hyperangulated Video Laryngoscopy (HA-VL) should be the next technique to learn to master.
• HA-VL improves view of cords but makes tube delivery more difficult
• The simplified airway algorithm (VL ->BMV->LMA->Front of Neck) is in my opinion far superior to the vortex model. In my opinion the vortex model suits anaesthetics but not ED.