Comparison of Direct Laryngoscopy and Video Laryngoscopy Success After Standardized Manikin Training in Medical Students

Objective: Endotracheal intubation is essential for emergency airway management, assisting ventilation and oxygenation by allowing airway patency. As an alternative to direct laryngoscopy (DL), the use of video laryngoscopy (VL) is now advocated by many operators, especially to manage the difficult airway (DA). This study aimed to compare DL and Scoper® VL in normal and DAs.
Material and Methods: We conducted a crossover trial comparing DL and VL in difficult and normal airway (NA). Twenty volunteer medical students from the University of Health Sciences Türkiye Hamidiye Faculty of Medicine who had not received intubation training before enrolled. After the training sessions, the volunteers performed at four different independent stations (DL on normal and DA scenarios, VL on normal and DA scenarios) in a completely randomized manner on the next day. The primary outcome was the first-pass success rate, with secondary outcomes of time to intubation, number of intubation attempts, user satisfaction, and procedural difficulty by visual analog scale.
Results: Twenty volunteers were included in the study. When the first-pass success rate was examined, the highest success rates were found with VL. No statistically significant difference was detected in terms of time to intubation, user satisfaction with the intervention, or procedural difficulty. No other statistically significant differences were found between the four scenarios in other pairwise comparisons (p<0.05).
Conclusion: Although the first-pass success rates were better with VL, it was not superior to DL. Further studies should be planned involving Scoper® in conjunction with other video laryngoscopes to evaluate efficacy.

Keywords: Video laryngoscopy, direct laryngoscopy, difficult airway, Scoper®, intubation, manikin