Endotracheal intubation, first tried in 1878 by MacEwen, is very important in respiratory care and airway. maintenance as well as administration of anesthetic gases. Since it has been widely used as usual method, many complications have been followed.
Large sized tubes cause the laryngeal and tracheal edema, tracheitis, ulcer, granuloma, and paralysis of vocal cord. When using the small sized tubes, we couldn´t obtain the optimal pressure to inflate the lung because of the leakage between trachea and endotracheal tube. Thus, our knowledge about accurate size of normal tracheal diameter is clinically very important.
In order to reduce these complications, we measured the tracheal diameter in cervical regions.
The materials are consisted of 732 neck films (A-P and Lat.) of normal Korean adults, 369 males, 363 females, who have no abnormalities in the cervical regions.
The following results were obtained; -
1. Transverse diameter of trachea was 20.2 + 3.2 mm in male, and 16.4 2.2 mm´ in female.
2. A-P diameter of trachea was 19.7 2.8 mm in male, and 15.4 2.0 mm in female.
3. Both values were greater in male than female, and transverse diameter was somewhat larger
than that of A-P.
4. The mean value of the tracheal size was 20.0 + 3.0 mm in male, 15.9 2.2 mm in female, and male was about 4.1 mm larger than female.
These results about normal Korean adults were almost same as those of Europian adults.
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