Bridges to establish an emergency airway and alternate intubating techniques

In this article, a number of alternatives to direct laryngoscopy are examined. These alternatives include the laryngeal mask airway (LMA; LMA North America, San Diego, CA), cuffed oropharyngeal airway (COPA; Mallinckrodt, St. Louis, MO), and Combitube (Kendall-Sheridan, Mansfield, MA), that have been designed to act as bridges to establish an airway. Other devices, such as rigid stylets, the lightwand (a blind technique) and indirect fiberoptic rigid stylets, such as the Bullard scope, Upsher scope, and Wu scope are also briefly discussed.