With an obstructed airway, the body is deprived of oxygen. If ventilation is not immediately reestablished, brain death will occur within minutes.
This is where airway management comes in. Skilled doctors and nurses open a patient’s airway by inserting a laryngoscope in the mouth, allowing access to the lungs. Through endotracheal intubation, a tube is introduced into the trachea to provide an open airway to administer oxygen.
People who need airway management are those who are critically ill or injured, unconscious, under anesthesia, with morbid obesity, neck and face trauma, lung or windpipe infection, people suffering from breathing difficulties, respiratory or cardiac arrest, respiratory failure and severe flail chest.
Opening the airway and assisting breathing is a critical first step in any emergency. With direct laryngoscopy, the view inside a patient’s mouth is limited, making intubation more difficult. This may cause serious throat trauma, cervical spine anomalies, or blood and secretions in the patient’s airway.
To avoid these problems, Verathon, a company from Canada that designs and manufactures state-of-the-art medical devices, introduced the GlideScope Video Laryngoscope in the country through the HealthSolutions Enterprises, Inc.
The GlideScope Video Laryngoscope (GVL) provides a consistently clear, real-time view of either normal or difficult airways, enabling quick intubation. The machine offers significant benefits to anesthesiology, critical care, military and emergency medicine.
Its 60-degree blade angle, the ideal to avoid throat trauma and bleeding, allows easy intubation to any type of airway. It has six single-use and four reusable blade sizes for different patient types, ranging from small children to morbidly obese patients.
GVL is also equipped with a high-resolution camera for real-time view of the patient’s airway and tube placement. Unique to the Verathon GVL is the Reveal™ Anti-Fog feature which heats up the camera in 10 seconds up to 41-degree Celsius to resist lens fogging.
The anti-fog mechanism is patented to Verathon for blade angles 50, 60 and 70 degrees, making it solely a Verathon GVL feature. This provides a clearer view of the entrance of the lungs compared to other video laryngoscopes in the market.
The device also comes with the GlideRite Rigid Stylet complementing GVL’s 60-degree blade angles which provides improved maneuverability for placement of the endotracheal tube. The 266 millimeters long stylet rod serves as a guide for intubation further reducing throat trauma.
Verathon’s GlideScope Video Laryngoscope is portable and easy to use, requiring less force to apply for intubation. The device is exclusively distributed in the Philippines by HealthSolutions Enterprises, Inc. For inquiries, contact its hotline at (02) 836-5858 to 62.#