My Opinion

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The gigantic scale of the growth of the surgical procedures and interventions and simultaneous boom in the intensive care settings require the constant evolution of the tracheal intubation techniques. The blind digital intubation is one of the techniques that had lost its utility because of the advent of the plethora of the videoscopic devices. However, the tables have turned and the advent of the ETView (ETView Medical Ltd.,Misgav,Israel), a tracheoscopic ventilation tube, has provided the possibility of intubating with operator’s digits’ support to accomplish majority of difficult airways. The ETView (1, 2) has a miniature video camera and a light source embedded in its tip. Even though the ETView provides a videoscopic view of the airway that it is traversing, still the tip of the ETView may require some additional support to aim the extremely anterior vocal cords or to overcome the heavily redundant peri-glottis tissues in the astronomically growing morbid to moribund obese population. At this point of time, the digital support of the posteriorly placed middle finger of the operator with flanking support of his/her index and ring fingers placed on/near the epiglottis can provide an enclosed tunnel to glide the non-styleted ETView under the direct visualization of the airway and if required the flexion at the interphalangeal joints of operator’s middle finger can provide the needed and graded ante-flexion at the non-styleted ETView tip to aim into an anterior glottic opening. The device is at its near-perfect stage of development wherein its only limitation as an airway device can be overcome by incorporating the non-lighted but fiberoptic-like disposable/reusable stylet that projects out of the distal tip of the ETView in enough length (5 cms) and has the flexibility as similar to the fiberscope’s tip but without its own inherent video or illumination capacity. With this improvement and technical incorporation in the ETView, the airway management can be perfectly (though in science, there is always scope of improving the perfection) accomplished with the operator’s digital guidance-support and the highly flexible projecting tip of the non-illuminated stylet within the tracheoscopic ventilation tube called ETView.     

References

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1.http://www.etview.com/ Last Accessed onDecember 17, 2011.
2.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ibl2xvkkWg Last Accessed onDecember 17, 2011.

Source(s) of Funding

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None

Competing Interests

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None

Disclaimer

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