Video laryngoscopy improves intubation success and reduces esophageal intubations compared with direct laryngoscopy in the medical intensive care unit

Urgent and emergent airway management outside the operating room is fraught with complications due to the nature of its acuity, single or multiple system dysfunction or failure, and physiological disturbances. These provide a challenge to the airway team and place the patient at grave risk for potentially life-threatening airway and hemodynamics-related consequences. Conventional laryngoscopy is rapidly being challenged by video-camera-assisted laryngoscopes that, in many cases, offer improved visualization of the airway. Successful intubation remains a lofty but attainable goal for airway specialists as well as the novice intubator. Yet to assume that airway management difficulties can be erased by incorporating a new device is optimistic but naive. In regard to patient safety, the device is just one piece of the airway puzzle.