Alternatives
Although it offers the greatest degree of protection against regurgitation and pulmonary aspiration, tracheal intubation is not the only means to maintain a patent airway. Alternative techniques for airway management and delivery of oxygen, volatile anesthetics or other breathing gases include the laryngeal mask airway, i-gel, cuffed oropharyngeal airway, continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP mask), nasal BiPAP mask, simple face mask, and nasal cannula.
General anesthesia is often administered without tracheal intubation in selected cases where the procedure is brief in duration, or procedures where the depth of anesthesia is not sufficient to cause significant compromise in ventilatory function. Even for longer duration or more invasive procedures, a general anesthetic may be administered without intubating the trachea, provided that patients are carefully selected, and the risk-benefit ratio is favorable (i.e., the risks associated with an unprotected airway are believed to be less than the risks of intubating the trachea).
Read more about this topic: Tracheal Intubation
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