Doyle J

Language: English
References: 18
Page: 164-167
PDF size: 627.40 Kb.

Text Extraction

Given the remarkable advances that have occurred in clinical airway management in recent years it is only natural for clinicians to wonder how airway management was carried out in distant times. It turns out that the art of clinical airway management is as old as medicine itself. For instance, there is evidence that the tracheotomy operation was portrayed on Egyptian tablets dating back to 3,600 BC, while reference to the procedure can be found in ancient Hindu scriptures dating from 2000 BC. It is also said that Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) saved a soldier from suffocation by making a tracheal incision using the tip of his dagger. Later, in 100 AD, Antyllus described tracheotomy as a «horizontal incision between 2 tracheal rings to bypass upper airway obstruction» while in 160 AD, the Roman physician Galen wrote, «If you take a dead animal and blow air through its larynx (through a reed), you will fill its bronchi and watch its lungs attain the greatest dimension» (Figure 1) illustrates a description of the operation in a 17^th century textbook.

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