Usefulness of Light Wand-guided Insertion of Flexible Reinforced Laryngeal Mask Airway

Usefulness of Light Wand-guided Insertion of Flexible Reinforced Laryngeal Mask Airway: Comparison With Conventional Blind-insertion

Flexible LMA (Laryngeal mask airway) is very useful for variable situation but it is hard to insert in correct position because of it's flexible structure. Especially in classical way of manual LMA insertion, when the index finger could not guide the flexible LMA to the optimal position, we could not guarantee the correct position of the LMA. Therefore several studies have been investigated to improve this.

The light wand is a kind of stylet which have a light on the tip. Recently some studies demonstrated the usefulness of the light wand which could be used for indicating correct position of the LMA. We hypothesised there will be two advantages if the light wand is used as a stylet of the flexible LMA. First the stylet could support the mildness of the flexible LMA, and second the lightness could confirm the correct position of the flexible LMA.

Inclusion Criteria:

• The patient need general anesthesia using LMA and belonged to the ASA(American society of Anesthesiologist) class I or II

Exclusion Criteria:

• The patient who has URI(upper respiratory infection) symptom within 14 days or
• The patient's BMI(body mass index) exceeds 35 kg/m2
• The patient has severe GERD(gastroesophageal reflux disease) or hiatus hernia
• The patient who has any contraindication for LMA insertion