The nature of the response to reported incidents in airway management - a scoping review

AbstractObjective: This scoping review aims to investigate the response in human airway management in high-income countries to findings of reported airway incidents.Introduction:Airway management uses techniques and devices to maintain or restore a patent airway for the purpose of oxygen delivery and carbon dioxide excretion. Airway incidents are rare but can cause significant patient harm and death within minutes. Incident reporting has been relied on in the field of anaesthetics, emergency medicine and intensive care medicine with multiple nationwide audits, case series and incident analyses relating to airway incidents reported in the last three decades.Inclusion criteria:Papers will be included if they focus on real events in airway management in humans, document findings from incident reports, audits, closed claimed studies or case series from high-income countries, and are published from 1990.Methods:The JBI Scoping Review guidance will be followed. Search terms have been developed using the PCC system. Pubmed, Ovid's Medline, Embase, JBI, SCOPUS and the Cochrane Library will be searched for articles that meet inclusion criteria. Additional databases may be added, and websites of airway management societies will be searched for gray literature. The search strategy will be displayed using a PRISMA flow diagram. All study designs will be considered and screened independently by two reviewers. The final relevant full text articles will be reviewed by all authors. Gaps in the literature will be analysed and documented and implemented system changes will be described and discussed.