<title>New laser tracheal tube</title>

Abstract

The complication of a laser induced tube fire during surgery was first published in 1979. The protection of tracheal tubes against ignition is necessary to enable a safe laser surgery of the upper airway. in an experimental study a new compound tube was tested: this tube had a higher laser resistance than a pure metal tube. The damage threshold of this tube was tested against the emission of various lasers as CO2. The metal tube was damaged within seconds at CO2 laser power densities of 103 W/cm2 whereas the damage threshold of the compound tube was 3.106 W/cm2. We compared the compound laser tube to the so far used metal tube in a prospective clinical trial in our department of ENT in patients undergoing CO2-laser surgery of the upper airway. 66 patients were included into the study: 33 received the compound tube, 33 the metal tube. During endotracheal intubation the handling of the compound tube was better. During laser surgery high airway pressures occured more often with the metal tube. Whereas kinking was the problem of the compound tubes. Destruction of cuffs occured in both groups but did not cause any complications. No tube or cuff fire was noticed.© (1996) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.