When a patient loses an airway, physicians often only have seconds to make a life-saving decision. The opportunity to successfully treat patients when their lives hang in the balance is why we have collaborated with physicians for years to develop new products. And it’s why we continue to collaborate today.
We developed our first cricothyrotomy kit nearly a quarter-century ago, to fill a need based on clinician feedback. We have continued to listen to clinicians and develop additional products to provide our customers options to perform this important procedure in a method of their choosing.
The Royal College of Anaesthetists released the National Audit Project (NAP4) in 2012 that recommended all anesthetists must be trained in emergency cricothyrotomy and keep their skills up to date.1 The report also recommended that surgical and Seldinger cricothyrotomy be taught side by side.
While we have provided a Seldinger kit for years, we saw the NAP4 report as a call to action. Less than two years after the NAP4 came out, we designed, engineered, and produced a surgical cricothyrotomy kit.
Every day we talk about putting patients at the center of our business, and sometimes that means stepping out of our comfort zone. We’ve built a business unit on over three decades of designing products for Seldinger procedures, including a percutaneous cricothyrotomy set. But rather than sit on the sidelines and stick to what we know, we chose to step out of the comfort zone and provide every option needed to perform a cricothyrotomy when seconds could be the difference between life or death.
Taking the time to listen to our customers to meet their needs has been at the heart of our success for over 50 years. Continuing the dialogue and staying true to those values will lay the groundwork for the decades of success ahead.
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1 Frerk C, Cook T. Management of the “can’t intubate can’t ventilate” situation and the emergency surgical airway. In 4th National Audit Project of The Royal College of Anaesthetists and the Difficult Airway Society. London, England: Royal College of Anaesthetists; 2011. www.rcoa.ac.uk/system/files/CSQ-NAP4-FULL.pdf. Published March 2011. Accessed December 19, 2013.