 One complication — unintentional and unrecognized intubation of the esophagus — is both common (as frequent as 25 % in the hands of inexperienced personnel) and likely to result in a deleterious or even fatal outcome. In such cases, oxygen is inadvertently administered to the stomach, from where it cannot be taken up by the circulatory system, instead of the lungs. If this situation is not immediately identified and corrected, death will ensue from cerebral and cardiac anoxia.
