Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT: Purpose
Airway evaluation is a fundamental component of the preanesthetic examination. Virtual care has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. We aimed to assess the reliability of a virtual preanesthetic airway evaluation compared with a traditional in-person airway evaluation.Methods
This prospective observational study compared the inter-rater agreement of an in-person airway evaluation performed by a consultant anesthesiologist with a virtual airway evaluation (VAE) performed by consultant anesthesiologists and medical students. The airway evaluation was completed using a comprehensive airway evaluation and scoring tool. The primary outcome was the inter-rater agreement of total scores between in-person anesthesiologist airway evaluations and the VAEs of both the anesthesiologists and medical students, assessed using Cohen's Kappa (CK). Secondary outcomes included the inter-rater agreement for each airway evaluation component between the in-person anesthesiologists and both the anesthesiologist and medical student VAEs, assessed using prevalence-adjusted and bias-adjusted Kappa.Results
One hundred out of 111 participants completed all three evaluations. The in-person anesthesiologist airway evaluations had fair and good levels of agreement of total scores with the VAEs of the anesthesiologists (CK, 0.21; 97.5% confidence interval [CI], 0.07 to 0.34) and the medical students (CK, 0.74; 97.5% CI, 0.62 to 0.86), respectively. One participant was reported to have a difficult intubation.Conclusion
Virtual airway evaluations performed by anesthesiologists and medical students had fair and good inter-rater agreement, respectively, with in-person anesthesiologist airway evaluations. Further study with a focus on patients with difficult airways is required to define the predictive value of VAEs regarding difficult intubations.
SUBMITTER: Zhao MY
PROVIDER: S-EPMC9663174 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jan
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Zhao Mars Y MY Macaskill James J McKay William W Hedlin Peter P Barbour-Tuck Erin E Walker Mary E ME Gamble Jonathan J
Canadian journal of anaesthesia = Journal canadien d'anesthesie 20221114 1
<h4>Purpose</h4>Airway evaluation is a fundamental component of the preanesthetic examination. Virtual care has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. We aimed to assess the reliability of a virtual preanesthetic airway evaluation compared with a traditional in-person airway evaluation.<h4>Methods</h4>This prospective observational study compared the inter-rater agreement of an in-person airway evaluation performed by a consultant anesthesiologist with a virtual airway evaluation (VAE) performe ...[more]