Local News - September 2003

Hospital acquires lifesaving device

Clearing the air

By SARAH GRANO, Staff Writer

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It is tragically simple. If a patient cannot breathe during an operation, death follows quickly.

Breathing should not be a problem at Lincoln Medical Center, which is home to some of the most cutting edge airway equipment in the world.

“Yesterday we had a woman who came in who had had her face operated on, and she had a hole in the side of her face, but she couldn’t open her mouth,” said Dr. Michael Murphy, who works in emergency medicine and anesthesia.

“Because of the equipment that we had available that you won’t find many other places, we were able to easily manage her airway, whereas other places it would have been a struggle.”

The newest piece of equipment used at LMC was just recently approved by the FDA.

The King LT Airway is a device that helps patients breathe during surgery by inserting a tube into the patient’s trachea to admit air.

“The competitor for this is a device that’s so much more damaging to the airway,” Murphy said.

LMC is the only hospital in the region with the King LT, and it was free.

Murphy is one of four physicians who teaches “The Difficult Airway Course.” The course is taught in North America and in Europe.

Companies come to Murphy with their new equipment in hopes that it will be added to the course.

The company who brought him the King LT flew in from Germany.

“I get offered pieces of equipment probably a dozen times a year,” said Murphy. “I probably take only a half a dozen.”

Murphy doesn’t accept equipment that is not superior to what LMC already has or has not been approved by the FDA.

“It’s not that we’re using experimental things here,” Murphy said.

“We’re using things that are tried and true and have been demonstrated in other countries to be useful.”

Murphy has taught the course for eight years. Last year he helped teach 15 courses.

“He’s teaching other physicians in emergency medicine, the people you see in the ER,” said Courtney Myers, community relations coordinator for the hospital.

Other pieces of airway equipment that LMC has recently acquired because of Murphy are the Trachlight and Glidescope.

The new equipment may have saved some lives.

One in five patients has a difficult airway, and one in three percent cannot be intubated with traditional means.

One in 2,500 patients can neither be intubated or ventilated and will die, said Murphy.

Statisically speaking, LMC should have recorded an operating room death due to an airway management failure, but Murphy said no such deaths have occurred.

 “It’s a big deal. So, it’s a little bit of an edge that we have that other people don’t have.”

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Staff Writer Sarah Grano can be reached at 704-735-3031 or sgrano@ltnews.com

© 2001 Lincoln Times-News  

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