Intubación guiada por ultrasonido en vía aérea difícil. A propósito de un caso

Abstract

Proper management of the airway as anesthesiologists is essential to avoid respiratory complications and the development of new technologies has allowed every day the possibility of a safer anesthetic management, this is how ultrasound has had great relevance today, since it allows perform increasingly safe and effective procedures, allowing the detection of anatomical alterations that together with clinical measurements give us predictability of the difficult airway, since it allows us to identify thyroid cartilage, epiglottis, cricoid cartilage, cricothyroid membrane, tracheal cartilage and esophagus. The clinical case of a male is presented in which multiple predictors of difficult airway are reported, due to the presence of a malignant tumor in the left mandibular body scheduled for surgical resection, in whom an evaluation of the anatomical structures was performed to rule out airway malformations with ultrasound visualization with the use of a high frequency linear transducer configured for superficial tissues in axial approach, later in real time it was used to corroborate successful intubation; Therefore, the use of ultrasound allows a more efficient management to be carried out in the approach of the difficult airway in this patient, which confirms the usefulness of this method as described in the consulted literature.