Manual in-line cervical Stablilisation

Once in a while, very uncommon, that I had a chance to work at the orthopaedic theatre, on that special day I had two patients with difficult endotracheal intubation, one was unexpected, while the other one was known to have the problem of her cervical spine and that was the course brought her to our hospital.

One thing when you face with the patient with cervical spine problem is how you may intervene when the endotracheal tube are planned, because you may extend the cervical spine too much and it would induce more injury to your patient, the thing that you can do can be the hard Philadelphia collar to support the patient during intubation, but my patient did not have one, so we just performed manual in-line cervical stabilisation to limit some degree of cervical movement during laryngoscope.

Position yourself not to obstruct the team member who is in-charge of airway control, you have to grasp the neck and shoulder in your hands, after that you can sit down to let your team member a chance to manipulate the airway.

With the new era of video-assisted endotracheal intubation, it would be easier to take care of your patient. On that day we utilised the brand of King-Fisher.

You have to maintain the head and neck of your patient at all time, when the tracheal tube was in placed, don't forget to auscultate the chest wall.