• John C Sakles, Jarrod Mosier, George Hadeed, Michael Hudson, Terence Valenzuela, and Rifat Latifi.
• Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85724, USA.
• Telemed J E Health. 2011 Apr 1;17(3):185-8.

BackgroundThe inability to secure a patient's airway in the prehospital setting is a major cause of potentially preventable death in the field of trauma and emergency medicine.MethodsThe University of Arizona in Tucson has established two telepresence programs, the Southern Arizona Teletrauma and Telepresence Program and Tucson Emergency Room (ER)-Link for assisting with trauma and emergency medicine patients in remote hospitals and prehospital system. Most recently, we have added videolaryngoscopes to our telepresence programs to assist with patients whose airway is difficult to manage.ResultWe describe the first reported case of using a videolaryngoscope (GlideScope™) and a telemedicine network to assist a healthcare provider performing tracheal intubation in a remote hospital.ConclusionVideolaryngoscopes allows for assistance with remote tracheal intubation and should be strongly considered as a component of teletrauma and telepresence programs to assist with difficult airway management.

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