[Assessment of learning in blind orotracheal intubation with Fastrach masks using a cumulative sum curves (CuSum) in...

To assess training in blind intubation with the Fastrach laryngeal mask in a simulation model by applying the cumulative sums (CuSum) method.

Six anaesthesiology resident doctors, with no previous experience of the technique, participated, three in their first year, and three in the second. The study was conducted with the help of the SimMan Universal Simulator. Fifty attempts by each one of them over a four month period, divided into two stages: the first 20 with minimum airway difficulty, and the next 30 with limitations of flexion-extension movements to <80°. An unacceptable failure rate was set at 10% after a second failed attempt. The time limit set to be considered a success was 60seconds.

A total of 120 attempts in the first stages, and the remaining 180 in the second were analysed individually, all managing to achieve acceptable success rates of 90%: 84% in the first attempt and 13.33% in the second. A total of 2.66% failures were recorded. The learning curve showed that the residents began to achieve an acceptable 90% success rate in case number 25±11.76 of the 50 attempts.

This statistical method and the SimMan simulator, used together, have demonstrated to be very useful tools in assessing learning curves in this technique.