Hey folks, Scott Weingard here, and this is the M-Crit podcast. Today on the podcast, we're going to talk about pediatric tracheotomy, front-of-neck access for failed airway or foreign body airway obstruction in kitties less than eight years old. After eight, you should be able to do a cryothorotomy on most children. But below that age,

chrycotherotomy is not going to work.

You have to do a tracheotomy,

and that's scary,

and you might want to retreat back to needle-based techniques.

But as you'll hear shortly,

those really don't work, they fail,

and just like in adults,

you need to pick up a knife.

Now, I don't have the experience or knowledge to talk about this, so I got an expert.

An expert on the systems-based thinking about this.

Cliff Reed has spent, I don't know, probably years investigating this, trying to find

the best technique for his Sydney Hems service, in which he is the director of education, as well as

the emergency department that many of the Sydney Hems folks work at. And Cliff will tell you, he's never done one of these.

He's just spoken to countless people and set up the systems for it. So that's what this episode

is going to be is talking with Cliff about after speaking to pediatric ENTs, experts in the field,

all sorts of people, what they came up with. But this is just a primer.

And then on a subsequent episode, we'll have a pediatric ear, nose, and throat surgeon

to talk about actual hands-on experience at the procedure.

So this is the primer, and then we'll get the explosion with a pediatric otolaryngologist.

Now, you definitely want to go to the show notes for this episode, mcrit.org slash 401.

You'll find all of Cliff's slides and his quick reference guide and all the references,

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