BACKGROUND: Maintenance of an airway in the air medically transported @entity1 is of paramount importance. The purpose of this study is to compare preflight versus en route @entity1170 ( @entity1170 )-assisted intubations and to determine the value of air medical use of @entity1170 . METHODS: This study is a 31-month retrospective review of all @entity1 intubated and transported by a large city air medical service. Subgroup analysis was based on whether @entity1 were transported from a hospital or a scene and whether they were intubated preflight or en route. Information on age, Glasgow @entity772 Scale score, type of scene, ground time, and previous attempts at intubation was recorded. Complications included failures, multiple attempts at intubation, @entity943 , and need for repeated paralytic agents. Comparisons were made using a confidence interval analysis. An alpha of 0.05 was considered significant; Bonferroni correction was used for multiple comparisons. RESULTS: Three hundred twenty-five @entity1 were intubated and transported by Lifeflight during the study period. Two hundred eighty-eight @entity1 were intubated using @entity1170 (89%). The success rate was 97%. Preflight intubations were performed on 100 hospital calls and 86 scene calls. En route intubations were performed on 40 hospital cases and 62 scene calls. @entity1 who underwent preflight intubations were significantly younger than those who underwent en route intubations for both the hospital group (34 +/- 11 vs. 44 +/- 24 years, p < 0.05) and the scene group (27 +/- 13 vs. 32 +/- 16 years,p < 0.05). Otherwise, the demographic characteristics of the four groups were similar. @entity130 accounted for 60 to 70% of hospital transfers and almost 95 to 100% of scene calls. Compared with preflight intubations, there was a significant decrease in ground time for hospital @entity1 who were intubated en route (26 +/- 10 vs. 34 +/- 11 minutes, p < 0.05) and for scene @entity1 who were intubated en route (11 +/- 8 vs. 18 +/- 9 minutes, p < 0.05). There were no significant differences between the groups for number of failures (9 of 288), @entity943 (18 of 288), or necessity for repeated @entity912 (8 of 288). Multiple intubation attempts were performed in more scene preflight @entity1 (30 of 86, 35%) than scene en route @entity1 (16 of 62, 26%), but this did not reach statistical significance. Even for @entity1 having previous attempts at intubation, the success rate using @entity1170 was 93% (62 of 67). CONCLUSION: Air medical intubations, both preflight and en route, for both scene calls and interhospital transports, can be done with a very high success rate. Rapid sequence intubation may improve the success rate. For scene calls, there was a significant decrease in ground time, and there was a trend toward fewer multiple intubation attempts when the @entity1 was intubated en route instead of preflight.

Preflight versus en route success and complications of XXXX in an air medical service.

@entity1 :: ('9606', 'Species') :: ['Patients', 'patients', 'patient'] @entity1170 :: ('MESH:C564983', 'Disease') :: ['RSI', 'rapid sequence intubation'] @entity772 :: ('MESH:D003128', 'Disease') :: ['Coma'] @entity943 :: ('MESH:D001145', 'Disease') :: ['arrhythmias'] @entity912 :: ('MESH:D010243', 'Disease') :: ['paralysis'] @entity130 :: ('MESH:D014947', 'Disease') :: ['Trauma']
@entity1170 :: (MESH:C564983,Disease) :: ['rapid sequence intubation']
