While data surrounding out-of-hospital ETI and survival outcome remains conflicting, what is clear is that the current level of training of US. paramedics and European EMS physicians is not sufficient to guarantee a universally acceptable intubation success rate. In Europe many procedure requirements are decreased locally to ensure recruitment of an adequate number of physicians. For example, some German states require only a minimum of 25 intubations to qualify as an EMS physician provider. This is far less than the approximate 200 intubations that Bernhard et al. demonstrated to be necessary to increase intubation success from 82% to 92%. At present, U.S. paramedic trainees require just five ETT attempts for the national paramedic certification. Poor training and lack of experience may explain why many paramedic or physician staffed systems demonstrate poor patient outcomes, low success rates, or high numbers of complications with ETI
Some have suggested that SGA devices should replace ETI in the prehospital setting er al. perfomed a retrospective analysis of 347 adult OHCA patients in Norway. The success rate of laryngeal tube insertion was 85.3% with a first pass success rate of 74.4%. Air leakage (17.6%) and aspiration (12.7%) were reported complications. A cadaveric study by Scmidbauer et al. demonstrated that inspiratory pressures of 40 and 60 mbar led to esophageal insuflation in all studied devices (LMA-Supreme during out-of- tubes LTS-D ll. ombitube and i-gel). Insufflation pressures during our-of-hospital ventilation are difficult to monitor, and unintended gastric and esophageal insufflation may lead to aspiration. Additionally, there are case reports of Combitube use contributing to aspiration, injury, and vocal cord damage. A swine cardiac arrest model demonstrated compression of the internal and extemal carotid vessels with SGA device placement (King LTS-D", LMA Flexible, Combitube'). A secondary analysis of data obtained from a multicenter study of patients suffering from OHCA showed that ETI was associated with improved outcomes over SGA device insertion. However, confounding variables in this analysis may impact the applicability of these findings. Additionally, other studies have shown no difference in neurologically favorable outcomes between patients treated with SGA devices and ETI in OHCA. While SGA devices will continue to remain a key component of prehospital airway management, at present they have not replaced ETI.