Depth of Anesthesia cover image

6: Is the sniffing position optimal for viewing the glottic opening?

Depth of Anesthesia

00:00

The Sniffing Position

The sniffing position is actually an old description of optimizing patients prior to direct laryngoscopy. It was promulgated by Chevala Jia Jackson, who was a famous thoracic surgeon. In short, there were two features that come together to form the sniffing position. No matter what you do with the head, neck, and so forth, you can't actually align the three axes and see the glottis without some sort of distortion of tissues at least if you want to look in a direct line of sight.

Play episode from 02:46
Transcript

The AI-powered Podcast Player

Save insights by tapping your headphones, chat with episodes, discover the best highlights - and more!
App store bannerPlay store banner
Get the app