LJT ORAL AIRWAYS INCREASE THE OROPHARYNGEAL OPENING AND CONTROL THE TONGUE

It is estimated that over 350 million oral (oropharyngeal) airways are used every year around the world, during anesthesia, on semi and unconscious patient’s and during CPR. Would it surprise you to know that current airways have been clinically proven to be deficient in maintaining the oropharynx airway. That’s why we developed LJT Oral Airways!

The two-leading oral (oropharyngeal) airways were introduced over 80 and 50 years ago respectively, but the simple fact is that medical science has taken leaps and bounds since that time but, unfortunately, with what we know today regarding anatomical physiology, they are an old “hold over” from the past and they do not adequately fulfill all of the requirements to carry out the task to maintain the airway in unconscious / semiconscious patients.

The biggest impediment, after placement of an oral airway, is the relaxation of the soft tissue structures in the hypopharynx. These structures are inclined to collapse, thus obstructing airflow, while occurring from both front-to-back and side-to-side, thus greatly decreasing the size of the oral opening.

In relation, literally every patient before and after anesthesia, CPR, or sedation, is provided with a manual jaw-thrust as they wake up to prevent the tongue from falling back and obstructing the airway. Furthermore, almost every patient intubated is provided with an airway to prevent biting of the soft endotracheal tube and the tongue. Both of these procedures involve protracting the lower jaw by pulling it forward relative to the upper jaw to open the airway.

Since current airways don’t sufficiently address these known physiological issues – we asked ourselves, why not address these drawbacks and engineer and design a better airway?  The result was our Lower Jaw-Thrusting (LJT) Oral Airways!

After examination and on comparison, current Guedel and Berman airways are dimensionally very different in relation to the proportional measurements and it is easy to see that these inconsistencies do not correspond to any design and anatomical logic.

Further our studies showed that in Guedel and Berman oral airways possess no proportional dimensional standards being employed to the length change in the bite block and the radius of the C curve. When no proportional standards are employed than this impacts the radius of the back body portion and how it will control and impact the anatomical structures of the oropharynx, i.e., epiglottis, root of the tongue, etc. These dimensional inconsistencies greatly impact how either airway design functions in relation to the anatomical requirements to keep an airway open.

It should also be noted that without the jaw-thrust design element and the ability to control the tongue, the relaxed jaw will allow for the relaxed tongue to fall back into the oropharynx because there is nothing to support it, resulting in an airway obstruction, causing complications for the anesthetist and the patient.

LJT Oral Airways = Better Airway Management

Download and Read our White Paper on Why We Developed the LJT Oral Airway and Why its Superior to Anything on the Market.

We designed the LJT Oral Airways to adhere to standardization across all of these dimensional elements to bring uniformity and increased functionality to airway management.

The main advantages of our LJT Oral Airways are:

Jaw Thrusting Design: studies have proven that mandibular advancement increases the oropharynx opening under anesthesia by pulling the tongue and soft palate forward which acts to maintain, control and increase of the oropharyngeal area.  Also eliminates the need to perform manual chin lift / jaw thrust during / after procedures.

Hands Free Use: our LJT design provides a “fulcrum”, which “locks” the device into place, thus, freeing the hands of the practitioner so they can attend to other tasks.

Back Plate Extensions: provides better control of the tongue from collapsing back into hypo-pharynx and from falling from side-to-side, thus, preventing from obstructing the airway further.

Obese Support: establishes an easy ventilation airway for overweight or obese patients. This patient population increases the difficulty of mask ventilation since they tend to have larger, thicker necks and tongues, along with more redundant soft tissue in the oropharyngeal area.

Bite Block Openings: wider opening through the bite portion provides more airflow than current oral airways.

Ventral Hump: projection that depresses the root of the tongue forwards prevents the tongue from moving back on the epiglottis and oropharynx, thus holding it away from the posterior pharyngeal wall.