Auscultation cannot distinguish esophageal from tracheal passage of tube

We quantitatively compared the acoustic characteristics of passage of an endotracheal tube into the trachea with those of passage into the esophagus by analyzing the loudness and frequency (90% spectral edge frequency) of the sounds when auscultated at the suprasternal notch. We found that there was a significant difference (P less than 0.01) in maximum loudness between esophageal and tracheal intubations (0.15 +/- 0.05 and 0.25 +/- 0.06 V, respectively). However, there were no significant differences between the 90% spectral edge frequencies. We conclude that, without directly comparing the maximal acoustic amplitude of tracheal intubation with that of esophageal in each patient, one cannot distinguish between the two types of intubation by means of auscultation.