Infant with unanticipated difficult airway - Trachlight™ to the rescue.

Lighted stylets may be used for assisting in oral intubation in both adult as well as pediatric age groups. We report the anesthetic management of an 11- month-old infant with fractured mandible where the airway was secured with tracheal lightwand-guided nasal intubation after the failure of repeated attempts of conventional laryngoscopy.

Intubation in a pediatric difficult airway using an adult flexible fiber-optic bronchoscope and a j-tipped guidewire: An innovation in adversity.

Management of an anticipated difficult airway relies heavily on flexible fiber-optic bronchoscope (FFB) guided awake intubations. In a pediatric patient with difficult airway, doing an awake procedure may be difficult, and hence the child is either deeply sedated or anesthesia is induced before attempting intubation with an appropriate sized FFB. We present the anesthetic management of a 6-year-old child with a lacerated tongue and fractured mandibular condyle, with subsequent inability to open his mouth, who was posted for urgent exploration and open reduction under anesthesia. Unhindered by a damaged pediatric FFB, we innovated by positioning the tip of an adult FFB just outside the larynx, passing a j-tipped guidewire through the working channel of the FFB, and successfully railroaded a naso-tracheal tube over the guidewire. The surgery, reversal and extubation, and the postoperative period were uneventful.

Failed nasal intubation after successful flexible bronchoscopy: Guide wire to the rescue.

Flexible fiberoptic bronchoscope-guided awake intubation is the most trusted technique for managing an anticipated difficult airway. Even after successfully negotiating the bronchoscope into the trachea, the possibility remains that the preloaded tracheal tube might prove to be inappropriately large, and may not negotiate the nasal structures. In such a situation, the most obvious solution is to take out the bronchoscope, replace the tracheal tube with a smaller one, and repeat the procedure. Unfortunately, sometimes the second attempt is not as easy as the first, as minor trauma during the earlier attempt causes tissue edema and bleeding, which makes the subsequent bronchoscopic view hazy and difficult. We present the anesthetic management of five cases with temporomandibular joint ankylosis where, after successful, though slightly traumatic, bronchoscope insertion into the trachea, the tube could not be threaded in. We avoided a repeat bronchoscopy by making an innovative change in the plan.