Advanced Airway Management & Ventilation

The AAM course covers all aspects of airway management, from basic facemask ventilation to tracheal intubation, difficult and failed airway management, as well as the use of rescue airway devices. It revisits many core concepts, dispels myths, highlights pitfalls and offers many useful tips to smooth airway interventions.

Who should attend this course?

This course would be of value to all practitioners regularly undertaking emergency airway intervention and ventilation techniques in the emergency environment, including the prehospital field.

Emergency Centre (Casualty Unit) doctors, Emergency Medicine registrars, paramedics and paramedic students would derive enormous benefit from attending this course.

Techniques and devices discussed would of equal value in the operating theatre environment, and would be of similar benefit to anaesthetic medical officers and registrars.

Detailed Course Outline

The course covers a discussion of the difficulties and pitfalls associated with prehospital and emergency room tracheal intubation, revisits the often under-estimated difficulty associated with facemask ventilation, and examines standard tracheal intubation in terms of the pre-intubation, intubation and post-intubation phases.

Prediction of the difficult airway is discussed, as is the management of the difficult and failed airway, and the detailed use of rescue airway devices.   Emphasis is placed on rapid sequence intubation, confirmation of tracheal tube placement, and the avoidance of unrecognized oesophageal intubation.   Emphasis is placed on the use of alternative and “assist” airway devices and emergency airway procedures.

Special cases are discussed in detail – namely the paediatric, pregnant, obese and the trauma patient.

Emergency Medicine doctors, anaesthetists, paramedics and nurses would gain an understanding of the difficulties associated with facemask ventilation, learn how to overcome the difficulties of tracheal intubation, and learn how to avoid the nightmare of the missed oesophageal intubation.

The candidate will be offered new ideas through a fresh perspective, on the standard techniques of tracheal intubation.   The associated concepts of ventilation, hypotension, sedation, analgesia and neuromuscular blockade will be enlightened upon.

Candidates will learn how to predict the difficult airway, and will learn how to manage the difficult and failed airway, including the “can’t intubate, can’t ventilate” scenario.

Candidates will gain insight and skill in the use of alternative and assist airway devices, and the use of rescue airway devices.   Candidates will gain exposure to emergency procedures, and will gain insight into the critical pitfalls associated with airway management in special patient groups.

The course will be structured with lectures in the mornings and practical sessions in the afternoons.

Clinical Director Profile

Dr John Roos

Qualifications: MB.ChB. (U.C.T.)., D.A. (S.A.)., F.C.A. (S.A.)., M.Med (Anaes).

Dr Roos qualified as a paramedic in 1987, graduated from medical school in 1994 and as a specialist anaesthetist in 2004.   He currently heads the Department of Anaesthesia at G.F. Jooste Hospital, works as a Metro Emergency Medical Services doctor on an ad hoc basis,  participates in Wilderness Search and Rescue, and actively participates on the AMS and SAAF helicopter rescue teams. He currently lectures at the Metro EMS Provincial Academy of Emergency Care, lectures on the AMS and Metro Aviation Medical courses, is an honorary lecturer with the combined Division of Emergency Medicine of the Universities of Cape Town and Stellenbosch, and chairs the SA Red Cross Air Mercy Service Quality Assurance programme.