Comparison of thyromental height with Thyromental distance, modified mallampati test and Ratio of height to thyromental distance in Predicting difficult airway: a one year hospital Based prospective observational study

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Preoperative airway assessment to identify patients with difficult airway is considered crucial for anaesthesiologists. Incidence of. difficult airway is projected in the range of 1.5% - 20%. Ineffective management of difficult airway is one of the important causes of anaesthesia related morbidity and mortality. Several preoperative airway predictive tests have been used alone or in combinations to predict difficult airway but none of them has been considered as the single best predictor of difficult airway. Thyromental Height is a relatively new airway assessment test that has been reported to have a better predictive accuracy of difficult airway. OBJECTIVES: We conducted this study to validate the best predictor of difficult airway by comparing Thyromental Height (TMHT) with other recognized airway assessment tests such as Thyromental distance (TMD), Modified Mallampati Test (MMT) and Ratio of Height.to Thyromental distance (RHTMD) and to evaluate the predictive accuracy of Thyromental height.