الفهرس 
Anatomy of the Upper Airway
Airway AssessmentOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Airway management is an integral part of general anesthesia. It simply aims to secure the patient’s airway and achieve adequate ventilation and oxygenation for the patient undergoing surgery under general anesthesia. Predicting a difficult airway isn’t at all an easy task for all patients and need Proper preoperative airway assessment to allow good planning and management of any expected difficulty. Many conventional clinical tests are used in preoperative airway assessment such as modified Mallampati classification, Thyro-mental distance, inter-incisor distance, cervical mobility, and neck circumference but they have limited value and low sensitivity and specificity. Difficult laryngoscopy cannot be always predicted based on the preoperative assessment by conventional clinical tests and the unexpected difficulty in laryngoscopy is the most direct cause of a difficult intubation which is a life-threatening situation and may lead to morbidity and mortality. Ultrasonography is a valuable promising tool for preoperative prediction of difficult laryngoscopy through identifying important sonoanatomy of the upper airway such as epiglottis, thyroid cartilage, and vocal cords. The aim of our study was to evaluate the ultrasonographic parameters [distance from skin to epiglottis (DSE) and distance from skin to vocal cords (DSVC)] measured in the parasagittal plane as preoperative predictors of difficult laryngoscopy in non-suspected difficult airway patients undergoing elective surgery under general anesthesia. This study was carried on 100 patients: 58 male and 42 female who went elective surgical intervention under general anaesthesia at Tanta university hospital during the period of the study. The range of age was 18- 64 years old with body mass index ranged from 20.24-29.41 Kg/m2. According to the modified Cormack and Lehane grading scale during direct laryngoscopy, the patients were divided in two groups, 83 patients in group A (easy laryngoscopy) and 17 patients in group B (difficult laryngoscopy).