Difficult intubation: a prospective study

Difficult intubation has been much discussed in the anaesthetic literature. The incidence of difficult intubation (11:560) was higher in obstetric patients (6:277) as compared to gynaecological patients (5:283) in our hospital. We tested the Mallampati's classification as a predictor of difficult intubation in 277 obstetric and 283 gynaecological patients. We recommend that Mallampati's classification can be used reliably (p less than 0.05) to predict difficult intubation in obstetric but not in gynaecological patients.