Emergency Cricothyroidotomy: A Randomized Crossover Trial Comparing Percutaneous Techniques: Classic Needle First Versus “Incision First”
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: Emergency cricothyroidotomy is potentially lifesaving in patients with airway compromise who cannot be intubated or ventilated by conventional means. The literature remains divided on the best insertion technique, namely, the open/surgical and percutaneous methods. The two are not mutually exclusive, and the study hypothesis was that an "incision-first" modification (IF) may improve the traditional needle-first (NF) percutaneous approach. This study assessed the IF technique compared to the NF method. METHODS: A randomized controlled crossover design with concealed allocation was completed for 180 simulated tracheal models. Attending and resident emergency physicians were enrolled. The primary outcome was time to successful cannulation; secondary outcomes included needle insertion(s), incision, and dilatation attempts. Finally, proportions of intratracheal insertion on the first attempt and subjective ease of insertion were compared. RESULTS: The IF technique was significantly faster than the standard NF technique (median = 53 seconds, interquartile range [IQR] = 45.0 to 86.4 seconds vs. median = 90 seconds, IQR = 55.2 to 108.6 seconds; p < 0.001). The median number of needle insertions was significantly higher for the NF technique (p = 0.018); there was no significant difference in dilation or incision attempts. Intratracheal insertion on the first attempt was documented in 90 and 93% of the NF and IF techniques, respectively (p = 0.317). All the study participants found the IF hybrid approach easier. CONCLUSIONS: The IF modification allows faster access, fewer complications, and more favorable clinician endorsement than the classic NF percutaneous technique in a validated model of cricothyroidotomy. We suggest therefore that the IF technique be considered as an improved method for insertion of an emergency cricothyroidotomy.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.024 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".