Identification of the difficult airway

Failure to identify a difficult airway can have serious consequences. It is essential that a thorough assessment of a patient's airway is made prior to anaesthesia, including taking a history, performing a focused examination, and reviewing any relevant investigations. The predictive power of individual bedside airway assessments is limited, though the use of composite scores may increase accuracy. Where predictors of potential difficulty are identified, these must be taken into account when formulating an appropriate airway management strategy and executing it. Despite thorough preoperative evaluation and planning, situations still arise where an unexpected difficult airway is encoun-tered, where maintenance of adequate oxygenation must take precedence.