Emergency cricothyrotomy: temporary measure or definitive airway? A systematic review

Being a fast and safe method in the hands of well trained professionals in both prehospital and intrahospital care, Cricothyrotomy has been broadly recommended as the initial surgical airway in the scenario "can't intubate, can't ventilate", and is particularly useful when the obstruction level is above or at the glottis. Its prolonged permanence, however, is an endless source of controversy. In this review we evaluate the complications of cricothyrotomy and the need of its routine conversion to tracheotomy through a search on PubMed, LILACS and SciELO electronic databases with no restriction to the year or language of the publication. In total, we identified 791 references, retrieved 20 full text articles, and included nine studies in our review. The incidence of short-term complications ranged from zero to 31.6%, and the long-term complications, from zero to 7.86%. Subglotic stenosis was the main long-term reported complication, even though it was quite infrequent, occurring only in 2.9 to 5%. The frequency of conversion to tracheostomy varied from zero to 100%. Although a small frequency of long-term complications was found for emergency cricothyrotomy, the studies' low level of evidence does not allow the recommendation of routine use of cricothyrotomy as a secure definitive airway.