Birth of The Laryngeal Mask Concept
Dr Archie Brain began studying the anatomy and physiology of the Upper Airway in relation to existing airways. Dr Brain concluded that current techniques for connecting artificial airways to the patient were not ideal, reasoning that if the respiratory tree is seen as a tube ending at the glottis and the objective is to connect this tube to an artificial airway, the most logical solution was to create a direct end-to-end junction. Existing airway devices clearly failed to form this junction; the face-mask sealed against the face, and the ETT penetrated too far so that the junction was created within the trachea, instead of at its beginning. Dr Brain wrote in his diary in May 1981, "Better, use a loop fitting into the anatomical loop of space surrounding the larynx, with a projection downwards into the oesophagus, which could be hollow, to drain regurgitant fluid.“
Read more about this topic: Laryngeal Mask Airway
Famous quotes containing the words birth, mask and/or concept:
“I am being given, if I may venture the expression, birth into death, such is my impression. The feet are clear already, of the great cunt of existence.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)
“But today I set the bed afire
and smoke is filling the room,
it is getting hot enough for the walls to melt,
and the icebox, a gluey white tooth.
I have on a mask in order to write my last words,
and they are just for you....”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“To find the length of an object, we have to perform certain
physical operations. The concept of length is therefore fixed when the operations by which length is measured are fixed: that is, the concept of length involves as much as and nothing more than the set of operations by which length is determined.”
—Percy W. Bridgman (1882–1961)