Objectives. This study was performed to evaluate whether different bed heights af-fect the performance of airway procedures.
Methods. Thirty three medical doctors performed endotracheal intubation (EI) and bag mask ventilation (BMV) using three different bed heights; knee height, mid-thigh height, and anterior superior iliac spine (ASIS) height. For EI, perfor-mance was assessed based on intubation time, intubation success, and damage to teeth. For BMV, performance was assessed based on tidal volume, ventilation rate, peak pressure, minute ventilation, and air-way opening. In addition, three numeric rating scales (NRS; 1 to 10) were used to assess the level of difficulty for each proce-dure and the doctors’ self-confidence. NRS scoring was based on posture (comfort-able to uncomfortable), handling (easy to hard), and visual field (good to bad).
Results. No significant differences in per-formance were observed for EI or BMV at the three different bed heights. How-ever, all of the NRS scores were signifi-cantly different among the different bed heights (P<0.001), and were poorest for the knee height beds: knee height (EI: pos-ture 5.8~7.3, handling 4.3~5.7, visual field 3.9~5.5; BMV: posture 7.1~8.0, handling 5.9~7.2, 95% CI), mid-thigh height (EI: posture 2.9~4.0, handling 2.9~4.0, visual field 2.7~3.8; BMV: posture 2.4~3.2, han-dling 2.3~3.5) and ASIS height (EI: pos-ture 2.2~3.5, handling 2.6~3.8, visual field 2.1~3.4; BMV: posture 2.9~4.4, handling 4.7~6.1).
Conclusions. Although the participants re-ported that the knee height beds were the least comfortable, hardest to handle, and made seeing the vocal cord difficult, these caveats did not affect their performance during airway procedures.