The time required to achieve endotracheal intubation in dogs: a comparison of veterinary students and qualified veterinary surgeons

Objective To determine whether final year veterinary students take longer to perform endotracheal intubation than qualified veterinary surgeons. Study design Observational cohort study. Animals A total of 38 healthy mesocephalic dogs undergoing general anaesthesia for a clinical purpose unrelated to this study. Methods Time to successful endotracheal intubation, measured from termination of intravenous induction drug administration to confirmation of endotracheal intubation, was recorded for two groups: final year veterinary students (group S) and qualified veterinary surgeons (group V). Animal age, breed and anaesthetic induction agent were also recorded. Following normality testing the groups were compared for each variable using the Student's t test or Mann-Whitney U test where appropriate. The level of significance was defined as p < 0.05. Timed data are presented as median and interquartile range. Results Time to successful intubation was 54.2 (31.3) seconds in group S and 11.7 (8.5) seconds in group V, the difference being significant (p < 0.001). There was also a significant difference between groups for animal age (p = 0.036) but not for breed (p = 0.573) or induction agent (p = 0.239). Conclusions and clinical relevance Veterinary students take longer to achieve successful endotracheal intubation of anaesthetized healthy dogs compared with qualified veterinary surgeons. To mitigate any additional risk of dogs developing hypoxaemia, it is recommended that a 55 second time limit is set after which the supervisor intervenes and takes over the intubation procedure. Preoxygenation may be used as an additional mitigation strategy.