• Koichi Takita and Yuji Morimoto.
• Department of Anesthesiology, Hokkaido University Graduate School of Medicine, Sapporo 060-8638.
• Masui. 2012 Apr 1; 61 (4): 418-23.

BackgroundRecently, in addition to bronchofiberscope, the new equipments to manage difficult intubation are available. However, it is unknown whether the incidence of difficult intubation decreases or not. In order to determine the incidence of severe difficult intubation, we conducted a survey of patients who presented with severely difficult intubation during 2005-2010.MethodsFrom data of patients in whom tracheal intubation was attempted in the operating rooms in Hokkaido university hospital from January 2005 to December 2010, the data was collected on the patients who presented with severely difficult intubation, defined as the inability to secure tracheal intubation in less than 20 min from induction of anesthesia.ResultsA total of 21,982 tracheal intubations were attempted during the study period. The incidence of severely difficult intubation was 0.3% (65 intubations for 58 patients). There was no significant difference among the years in the incidence of severely difficult intubation.ConclusionsThe incidence of severely difficult intubation was 0.3% in Hokkaido university hospital during 2005-2010.

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