D., for his review and comments on the manuscript. The authors also thank Vikhyat Bebarta, M.D., for his insight into the issue of the quality of published case reports. Dr. Heard was supported by DA020573 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The funding agency had no role in the design, performance, manuscript preparation or decision Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical to publish this information.
Intubation of

the trachea by paramedics in the pre-hospital setting may be lifesaving in severely ill and injured patients [1-3]. However, tracheal intubation is often difficult to perform in this setting, is associated with a lower success rate. Failed tracheal intubation in this setting constitutes an important cause of morbidity, arising from direct airway trauma and the systemic complications of hypoxia [4,5]. In Ireland, Advanced Paramedics (AP’s) Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical are a subgroup of Emergency Medicine Technicians that are trained and certified as being competent in the skill of direct laryngoscopy and tracheal intubation. The recent development of a number of indirect laryngoscopes, which do not require alignment of the oral-pharyngeal-tracheal axes, may reduce

the difficult of tracheal intubation in the prehospital setting. Two portable indirect laryngoscopes, Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical which could be included in ambulance equipment inventories, are the Glidescope® (Saturn Biomedical System Inc., Burnaby, Canada) (Figure ​(Figure1)1) and the AWS® (Hoya Corporation, Tokyo, Japan) (Figure ​(Figure2)2) laryngoscopes. Clinical studies have demonstrated advantages over the Macintosh laryngoscope for both the Glidescope® [6-9], and the AWS® [8,10] laryngoscopes. However, the efficacy of the Glidescope® and the AWS® when used by APs is not

known, and Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical the relative efficacies Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical of these devices in comparison to the Macintosh laryngoscope have not been compared in a single study. Figure 1 Photograph of the Glidescope laryngoscope. The device is held in the left hand and passed into the mouth over the tongue, and the tip Selleck AZD8931 placed in the vallecula or under the epiglottis. Figure 2 Photograph of the AWS® laryngoscope. The device is held in the left hand and Adenylyl cyclase passed into the mouth over the tongue, and the tip is placed under the epiglottis. We therefore wished to compare these two novel devices to the Macintosh laryngoscope when used by APs with demonstrated competence in the skill of tracheal intubation using the Macintosh laryngoscope. Methods Following ethical committee approval, and written informed consent, 25 Advanced Paramedics certified as competent to perform tracheal intubation consented to participate in this study. These participants constituted a convenience sample of AP’s that attended a Resuscitation Conference on the 11th June 2008 in Galway, Ireland, and represents more than 20% of all paramedics in Ireland. Each AP received a standardized training session with the Glidescope®, the AWS® and the Macintosh laryngoscopes.