Association Between Emergency Medical Service Agency Intubation Rate and Intubation Success

Airway management is a crucial part of out-of-hospital care. It is not known if the rate of overall agency intubation attempts is associated with intubation success. We sought to evaluate the association between agency intubation attempt rate and intubation success using a national out-of-hospital database.

We conducted a retrospective secondary analysis of the ESO Data Collaborative from 2018 to 2019, and included all adult cases with an endotracheal intubation attempt. We calculated the number of intubations attempted per 100 responses, advanced life support responses, and transports for each agency. We excluded cases originating at health care facilities and outliers. We used multivariable logistic regression to evaluate the association between agency intubation attempt rate and 1) intubation success and 2) first-pass success. We adjusted for confounders.

We included 1,005 agencies attempting 58,509 intubations. Overall, the intubation success rate was 78.8%, and the first-pass success rate was 68.5%. Per agency, the median rate of intubation attempts per 100 emergency medical service responses was 0.8 (interquartile range 0.6 to 1.1). Rates of intubation attempts per 100 responses (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 1.7; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.6 to 1.8), advanced life support responses (aOR 1.18; 95% CI 1.16 to 1.20), and transports (aOR 1.21; 95% CI 1.18 to 1.22) were all associated with intubation success. These relationships were similar for first-pass success but with smaller effect sizes.

Higher agency rates of intubation attempts were associated with increased rates of intubation success and first-pass success.