Novel Configuration of Laryngeal Mask Airway

Abstract

Objectives:

Hospital airway emergency teams are often responsible for responding to codes, emergency intubations etc. The individual provider may have to respond quickly to widely separated areas of large medical centers on a moment’s notice.  Further, in addition to the urgency, the distance of different sites makes it important that the airway team not have to lug a large medical gear bag with airway supplies and emergency drugs.

While the importance of the LMA in emergency airway management has been well established, it is sold as a fairly bulky device that requires a disproportionate space in an airway pack.  We sought  to examine whether modifying the LMA packaging might reduce the amount of space taken up by the need to carry three different sizes in an airway pack.

Methods:

A commonly used Laryngeal Mask Size Number 3 manufactured by Ambu Company was studied. The volume displacement of the package, and then just the LMA was measured using volumetric techniques.

Results:

Removing the large packaging yielded a much smaller footprint in cubic ml that was only 18% of the original packaging: 43 versus 240 cubic milliliters.

Conclusions:

This configuration of LMA transport allows for transporting more airway equipment in less space. These results have important implications for emergency airway response teams. Removing the original packaging and using this folded-over configuration allows to use 82% less volume in cubic milliliters per LMA in the airway pack.  This allows emergency teams to carry more equipment in much less space.