Yes, this is EMK's Best Case Ever mini podcast series, and I'm your host, Dr. Anton Hellman.

This time around, we have none other than Dr. Richard Levittan.

Dr. Richard Levitan. We're here at Smack in Chicago, and I have the pleasure and honor of having with us Dr. Richard Levittan, the world famous

airway educator and innovator, and he's going to tell us his best case ever. Rich, let it rip.

Thank you, Anton, for the invite and the opportunity to chime in. You know, I just want to sort of shout out to the smack world. I really appreciate getting the feedback from the folks I meet, and I appreciate the introduction. I am an airway enthusiast. I sometimes reluctantly wear the title of being an airway expert. My expertise is in intubating the dead. I have

intubated more dead people than anybody in the planet. It's kind of an odd distinction, but it's

true. And so I want to share with you my best case ever because it actually involves

intubating the dead and comes back to what I believe after 12 years of monthly cadaver courses,

I really have a completely different perspective on the way I teach,

the way I train,

the way I think about the problems in emergency medicine.

So for me, this case crystallizes that.

In the inner city urban American war, it's a tough gig,

and I did it for 23 years. And I was working, it was a busy shift. It's 11 o'clock at night. I have 40 people in the waiting room.

I hear overhead trauma, emergency medicine, team B to the trauma OR. Emergency medicine, team B to the trauma OR. You know, we had so much penetrating

trauma in Philly that at Jefferson, there was actually an OR in the ER. And you could press a button

and these people who had central box wounds, people who needed to be in the operating room instantly,

you press a button and poof, trauma would appear, anesthesia would

appear. You'd have a room filled with about 20, 25 people instantly with tremendous resources.

And, you know, if you're going to survive a central box wound, that was pretty extraordinary to

have that capability. But basically, overhead, they announced this gunshot, and it's team B. I am on team A.

And I think to myself, you know, I've got so many people to work through that it didn't bother me that I wasn't going to the trauma OR.

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