• Jeong-Hwa Seo, Jun-Yeol Bae, Hyun Joo Kim, Deok Man Hong, and Yunseok Jeon.
• Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul National University College of Medicine, 101 Daehak-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul, 03080, South Korea.
• BMC Anesthesiol. 2015 Oct 28; 15: 157.

BackgroundDouble-lumen endobronchial tubes (DLTs) are commonly advanced into the mainstem bronchus either blindly or by fiberoptic bronchoscopic guidance. However, blind advancement may result in misplacement of left-sided DLTs into the right bronchus. Therefore, incidence, risk factors, and blind repositioning techniques for right bronchial misplacement of left-sided DLTs were investigated.MethodsThis was an observational cohort study performed on the data depository consecutively collected from patients who underwent intubation of left-sided DLTs for 2 years. Patients' clinical and anatomical characteristics were analyzed to investigate risk factors for DLT misplacements with logistic regression analysis. Moreover, when DLTs were misplaced into the right bronchus, the bronchial tube was withdrawn into the trachea and blindly readvanced without rotation, or with 90° or 180° counterclockwise rotation while the patient's head was turned right.ResultsDLTs were inadvertently advanced into the right bronchus in 48 of 1135 (4.2 %) patients. DLT misplacements occurred more frequently in females, in patients of short stature or with narrow trachea and bronchi, and when small-sized DLTs were used. All of these factors were significantly inter-correlated each other (P < 0.001). In 40 of the 48 (83.3 %) patients, blind repositioning was successful.ConclusionsSmaller left-sided DLTs were more frequently misplaced into the right mainstem bronchus than larger DLTs. Moreover, we were usually able to reposition the misplaced DLTs into the left bronchus by using the blind techniques.Trial RegistrationClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01371773.

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