RESEARCH ARTICLE


SHORT COMMUNICATION A Potential Method for Safe Recovery from Recognized Inadvertent Esophageal Intubation



Brian Milne, Jessica E. Burjorjee*
Department of Anesthesiology & Perioperative Medicine, Queen’s University and Kingston General Hospital, Kingston, Canada


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Creative Commons License
© 2013 Milne and Burjorjee

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine, Queen’s University, Victory 2, Kingston General Hospital, 76 Stuart Street, Kingston, Ontario, K7L 2V7 Canada; Tel: (613) 548-7827; Fax: (613) 548-1375; E-mail: burjorjj@kgh.kari.net


Abstract

How to proceed following inadvertent esophageal intubation and what to do with the misplaced endotracheal tube is controversial and not specifically addressed in the difficult airway algorithm from the American Society of Anesthesiologists.

Here we describe a simple and effective strategy to manually ventilate the patient with an air cushioned face mask while leaving the endotracheal tube in the esophagus to provide a conduit for stomach content suction until definitive endotracheal intubation. We describe clinical circumstances in which we used this method successfully.

Whether to leave the endotracheal tube in the esophagus or what to do with it should be specifically addressed in difficult airway algorithms.

Keywords: American Society of Anesthesiologist’s (ASA) Difficult Airway Algorithm, Esophageal intubation, Difficult airway, Intubation method, Patient safety.