Airway management in patients with suspected or confirmed traumatic spinal cord injury: a narrative review of current evidence.

ABSTRACT: Around 1 million people sustain a spinal cord injury each year, which can have significant psychosocial, physical and socio-economic consequences for patients, their families and society. The aim of this review is to provide clinicians with a summary of recent studies of direct relevance to the airway management of patients with confirmed or suspected traumatic spinal cord injury to promote best clinical practice. All airway interventions are associated with some degree of movement of the cervical spine; in general, these are very small and whether these are clinically significant in terms of impingement of the spinal cord is unclear. Manual in-line stabilisation does not effectively immobilise the cervical spine and increases the likelihood of difficult and failed tracheal intubation. The

SUBMITTER: Wiles MD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9546380 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature