• Christian Alflen, Marc Kriege, Irene Schmidtmann, Rüdiger R Noppens, and Tim Piepho.
• Department of Anesthesiology, University Medical Center of the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Langenbeckstrasse 1, Mainz, 55131, Germany. chalflen@uni-mainz.de.
• BMC Anesthesiol. 2017 Apr 4; 17 (1): 54.

BackgroundOrogastric tube placement is a common procedure routinely used in clinical anesthesiology and intensive care medicine. Nevertheless high failure rates and severe complications have been reported. We conducted this study to evaluate if the usage of the new gastric tube guide would speed up the placement of orogastric tubes and ease the procedure.MethodsThirty one professionals were given a hands-on-training in orogastric tube placement in a simulation manikin without and with the gastric tube guide. Afterwards they performed both methods in randomized order. We recorded the placement time, counted the required attempts and asked the participants to rate their experience with both methods.ResultsThe median placement time using the gastric tube guide was 14 s compared to 25 s without the device. In addition all participants were able to place the orogastric tube when using the gastric tube guide compared to 26/31 (84%) without it. Furthermore 26/31 (84%) users preferred the gastric tube guide over the standard method.ConclusionOur results show that using the gastric tube guide to place orogastric tubes in a manikin led to a significant shorter placement time and a higher overall success rate.

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