Having proper airway management with your patients, may be the deciding factor to if they survive or not. Maintaining a proper airway can be done many different ways; by using proper manual maneuvers, using supraglottic techniques and infraglottic/surgical techniques. Using proper manual maneuvers such as head tilt-chin lift and jaw thrust, yet a simple techniques, can have a large effect on a patient. “Head tilt-chin lift is the primary method used to open an airway, used for unconscious patient’s to prevent the tongue from obstructing their airway and the jaw thrust is an alternative method used for patient’s with spinal or suspected spinal injuries”(Basic Life Support, 2016). After having your patient in either method, you can use airway
…show more content…
“Indications for use are a unresponsive patient, no cervical spine injury and a patient that can’t protect their own airway. Contraindications are a responsive patient or a patient with suspected spinal injury. If the patient has a suspected spinal injury, you’ll use the jaw thrust method”(Caroline, 1995). Both methods require no equipment and are safe and noninvasive techniques, the only downfall to them is you’ll be losing two valuable hands since they’ll be used to maintain the patient’s airway. In incidents where triage is established, the paramedic who “tags” victims will do a quick check of their ABC’s and perform a head tilt-chin lift before leaving their triage category either a deceased, immediate, delayed or minor card. The paramedic doesn’t hold the head tilt-chin lift, as he or she needs to evaluate other patients and only has limited time with each patient. This method is used in hopes that when a paramedic gets to patient, their condition hasn’t deteriorated because occasionally a head tilt-chin lift is all that’s needed for a patient to begin breathing again. The maneuvers for maintaining a patient’s airway is easy, yet can be challenging when faced with other obstacles such as airway obstructions like blood, vomiting and teeth, these need to be removed with either a finger sweep or by suctioning. After the patient’s airway is corrected, adjuncts may be used to aid in treating the patient if the manual maneuvers aren’t working
“Indications for use are a unresponsive patient, no cervical spine injury and a patient that can’t protect their own airway. Contraindications are a responsive patient or a patient with suspected spinal injury. If the patient has a suspected spinal injury, you’ll use the jaw thrust method”(Caroline, 1995). Both methods require no equipment and are safe and noninvasive techniques, the only downfall to them is you’ll be losing two valuable hands since they’ll be used to maintain the patient’s airway. In incidents where triage is established, the paramedic who “tags” victims will do a quick check of their ABC’s and perform a head tilt-chin lift before leaving their triage category either a deceased, immediate, delayed or minor card. The paramedic doesn’t hold the head tilt-chin lift, as he or she needs to evaluate other patients and only has limited time with each patient. This method is used in hopes that when a paramedic gets to patient, their condition hasn’t deteriorated because occasionally a head tilt-chin lift is all that’s needed for a patient to begin breathing again. The maneuvers for maintaining a patient’s airway is easy, yet can be challenging when faced with other obstacles such as airway obstructions like blood, vomiting and teeth, these need to be removed with either a finger sweep or by suctioning. After the patient’s airway is corrected, adjuncts may be used to aid in treating the patient if the manual maneuvers aren’t working