Nursing Advanced Practice, Clinical
Clinical Skills: Explained (Procedures for Basic Airway Management)
Aug 12, 2021
Procedures can be daunting the first few times around, but don’t worry, you’ll be a seasoned pro soon enough! Until then, here’s a little help with manual airway maneuvers!
- A chin lift or jaw thrust should be performed on every unconscious patient, as these patients are high risk for upper airway obstruction.
- This maneuver pulls the hyoid bone anteriorly, which in turn pulls the epiglottis and posterior tongue superiorly and anteriorly away from the posterior pharyngeal wall.
- The hyoid bone attaches the muscles of the floor of the mouth and the base of the tongue, the larynx below, and the epiglottis; elevating the hyoid (manual airway maneuvers) lifts all these structures away from the posterior pharyngeal wall and hence alleviates airway obstruction, which is prominent in the semi-/unconscious patient.
- In a cadaver study, Prasarn et al. (2014) have shown that the chin-lift maneuver increases movement at C1/C2 significantly more than the jaw-thrust maneuver.
- Note that a child’s airway demands greater attentiveness as children have a relatively larger tongue and epiglottis and a smaller luminal airway diameter relative to adults.
We hope some of these tips derived from Essential Procedures for Emergency, Urgent, and Primary Care Settings will help you gain more confidence in the field!
