Learn Why Our MT Oral Airways Make Difficult Airways a Thing of the Past
It is estimated that over 300 million oropharyngeal (oral) airways are used every year around the world, during anesthesia, on semiconscious / unconscious patient’s and during CPR. But would it surprise you to know that current common Guedel and Berman oral airways have been clinically proven to be deficient in opening and maintaining the oropharynx airway? That’s why we developed our line of WEDGE MT Oral Airways!
These two-leading oral airways were introduced over 80 and 65 years ago, 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 maintain the airway in semiconscious / unconscious patients.
Current common oral airways are:
Our line of WEDGE MT Oral Airways provide:
Wedge Therapeutics is proud to announce that our revolutionary line of MT Airways has been licensed to SunMed for manufacturing, sales and distribution.
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 (or closing) the oropharyngeal airway 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 and soft tissue structures 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 designed an oropharyngeal airway that focuses on these drawbacks. Since mandibular advancement has been clinically proven to open and maintain the oropharynx airway, we designed a mechanical jaw thrust right into the airway. The result was our WEDGE MJT 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. Since these two devices were developed to open and maintain the oropharynx airway, shouldn’t they have the same dimensions? The answer is a resounding, “Yes”.
Further our studies showed that these common oral airways possess no proportional dimensional standards in relation to the length change in the bite block and the radius of the C curve. This impacts the radius of the back-body portion and how it will control and impact the anatomical structures of the oropharynx, i.e., tongue, epiglottis, 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.
Employs “known” anatomical design elements to thrust lower jaw to pull tongue and soft palate forward and control open airway.
Design allows for fixed positioning of airway so it can free the hands of the practitioner. Also eliminates the need to perform manual chin lift / jaw thrust during / after medical procedures.
Plate extension placed ventrally lower to the curved part of the airway provides better support from the tongue falling laterally, thus increasing the side to side dimensions of oral airway opening.
Affixing lower jaw forward increases oropharyngeal airway opening by up to 50% and therefore increases airflow considerably.
Patented design addresses the need to establish 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.
Ventral projection depresses the root of the tongue and prevents the tongue from moving back on the epiglottis and oropharynx, thus holding it away from posterior pharyngeal wall.
Curved opening at end of back body and side ventilation openings prevents obstruction from mucous block or regurgitant's and allows for continuous ventilation
"It was difficult to manually ventilate by mask without any airway insertion. As soon as the MT Airway was placed and the lower jaw advanced, the airway opened, and manual ventilation was very easy."
"It was a known difficult airway case, so I elected to use flexible fiberoptic intubation in an awake patient. He tolerated the forward displacement of his jaw while awake and I was able to place the ETT via the fiberscope before sending him to sleep. The concept for the MT Airway as a replacement for the Guedel airway works!"
Your MT mandibular protracting tongue holding oropharyngeal airway is revolutionary.
In most cases excluding morbid obese patients, it will eliminate requirement of needing two person ventilating unconscious patients' lungs.
I wish you success in your endeavor to improve patient safety and improve outcomes in health care.
This is a landmark achievement to maintain the airway in the unconscious person during anesthesia or in the resuscitation field.
Finally, there is an oral airway which can thrust the lower jaw forward to maintain a patent airway while freeing the hands of the caregiver to attend to other critical tasks such as ventilation and administration of medications. outcomes in health care.
Wedge MT Airways were the brainchild of Dr. T.R. Shantha, a Nobel-nominated research scientist, physician and anesthesiologist for over 4 decades. Using his clinical knowledge of the drawbacks associated with the use of common Guedel and Berman oral airways, he developed a novel concept to address the age-old issues associated with dealing with “difficult airways”. This includes the need to do away with the continued requirement for manual and bi-manual lower jaw-thrusting by the practitioner in order to maintain an open airway.
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