Postoperative sore throat after endotracheal intubation of LMA

ABSTRACT

A prospective, randomized study was conducted to compare the postoperative throat complaints between two groups of patients with the airway managed either with an endotracheal tube [ETT] or a Laryngeal Mask Airway [LMA]. One hundred patients, ages 20-50 years and belonging to [ASA] class I and II were randomly allocated to the two groups. Patients in both groups underwent surgical procedures of less than one hour duration under general anaesthesia. Thirty percent of patients in the LMA group compared to sixty percent in [ETT] group had postoperative throat complaints. The difference was statistically highly significant [P=0.0005]. Moreover the degree of severity of sore throat in [ETT] group was higher than that in LMA group. It was concluded from the results that the use of LMA was associated with a reduced incidence and lower degree of severity of postoperative sore throat when compared to the ETT