Paramedic PapersHome Paediatrics Paediatric air medical intubation performance
Paediatrics
Paediatric air medical intubation performance
Practice Patterns and Performance of Pediatric Air Medical Tracheal Intubation: A National Multisite Cohort Study
Prehospital Emergency Care · Added 22 September 2026
US national cohort of 1,040 paediatric air medical intubations — 86.5% first-pass success overall but only 69.1% in infants under 1, with ketamine the commonest induction agent and substantial site-to-site variation
- Study type
- Cohort
- Design
- Retrospective national multisite cohort
- Participants
- 1,040 paediatric air medical intubations at 39 US sites
- Main finding
- First-pass success 86.5% (898/1,038) and overall success 93.3%; only 69.1% first-pass success in infants <1 year vs 88.7% in adolescents, with less frequent post-intubation ETCO2 documentation; ketamine most common induction agent (43.5%); substantial site variation
- Caveat
- US air medical cohort with retrospective data and only 8.6% video laryngoscopy documentation; may not generalise to Australian systems
- Bottom line
- Context only
Why it matters in Australia (Medium relevance). transferability — RSI is ICP-only at ACTAS and infants aren't intubated prehospital here; etomidate isn't carried and rocuronium isn't either, so the drug mix is overseas practice — but the infant first-pass numbers are a sharp caution for any advanced paediatric airway pathway
Learning goal
Strengthen my airway decision-making for infants under one, where first-pass intubation success is lowest.
More
- Topic: Paediatrics
- Daily scan: 22 September 2026
Related papers on Paediatrics
-
Post-ROSC PaCO2 doesn't predict paediatric OHCA outcome
Japanese multicentre registry study of 215 paediatric OHCA patients testing whether the first post-ROSC PaCO2 category predicts 30-day outcomes — no clear association with favourable neurologic outcome or survival for either hypocapnia (aOR 0.83) or hypercapnia (aOR 1.46), though estimates were imprecise with wide confidence intervals.
-
Intranasal dexmedetomidine paediatric sedation
Townsville cohort of 114 children given intranasal dexmedetomidine for ED procedural sedation — effective as a sole agent in 78%, adverse events in 13% (mostly mild bradycardia), but ED stays ran long at a median 395 minutes
-
Paediatric IV ketamine sedation very safe
Systematic review of 20 studies covering 67,871 children having IV ketamine procedural sedation in EDs — no deaths or permanent adverse outcomes, sentinel events pooled at about 1 in 11,558 sedations, serious adverse events 0.34%, with age ≥10, upper respiratory infection and opioid co-administration modest predictors while ASA status and benzodiazepine co-administration were not.
-
Anonymous video deletion biased newborn RCT
Norwegian analysis of the NeoBeat RCT testing whether anonymous staff deletion of resuscitation videos introduced selection bias — after the anonymous opt-out, enrolled newborns had significantly higher Apgar scores, shorter ventilation and fewer admissions, and the trial was terminated halfway without power to conclude on its outcomes.