Making endotracheal intubation easy and successful, particularly in unexpected difficult airway.

Background: Difficult intubation, most often due to poor view of the vocal cords on laryngoscopy is an intermittent and often challenging problem for clinically practicing anesthesiologists, maxillofacial surgeons, ear nose, and throat (ENT), emergency, and critical care physicians. Purpose: We present a new approach for facilitating difficult intubation and evaluate its efficacy in a retrospective observational study. Settings and Design: Operating room, emergency department, intensive care unit (ICU), retrospective observational study. Materials and Methods: A semirigid 5.6 Rusch tracheal tube introducer (bougie) with its soft tip protruding at least 6 cm (=4 digits) beyond the distal end…