Because inadequate airway management continues to be an important
contributor to serious complications, ultrasound is an emerging tool that has many
obvious advantages (safe, fast, repeatable, portable, widely available, and gives
dynamic images in real time) that we can use for patient safety. In the upper airway,
there are many uses for the ultrasound, for example, oesophageal intubation, adequate
placement of the endotracheal tube, selection of the appropriate size of conventional
tube and double-lumen tube, adequate placement of supraglottic devices, predictors of
difficult airway, predictors of post-extubation stridor risk, prandial status, nerve blocks,
or percutaneous tracheostomy.
Keywords: Air-mucosal interface, Airway management, Difficult airway,
Cricothyroid Membrane, Hypoechoic, Hyperechoic, Intubation, Intratracheal,
Laryngoscopy, Predictors, Pretracheal tissues, Skin-to-epiglottis distance, Skin to
hyoid distance, Tracheostomy, Thyrohyoid Membrane, Ultrasonography.