Head Position Angles in Children

March 25, 2009 updated by: Medical University Innsbruck

Head Position Angles in Children to Open the Upper Airway

Inexperienced rescuers may encounter severe problems in an unconscious patient in opening and maintaining an upper airway patent. Designing a ventilating device that could indicate how to open an upper airway correctly may be beneficial. The head of children is randomly placed in different head positions by one investigator. A ventilating mask is then pressed gently on the child's face followed by measurement of the head position angles and pulmonary function. This information could be utilised to optimise assisted ventilation of an unprotected upper airway in children.

Study Overview

Status

Terminated

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

Ventilation during basic life support improves survival in cardiac arrest patients significantly. Unfortunately, this is in contrast to the willingness of potential rescuers to perform mouth-to-mouth ventilation. For example, although healthcare professionals would perform mouth-to-mouth ventilation on a 4-year old drowned child in >90% of cases, this likelihood would decrease to ~10% in the case of a young male unconscious patient in a San Francisco public bus. Possibly, lay rescuers would perform assisted ventilation more often if a simple ventilation device were available. However, both the willingness to perform assisted ventilation plus the ability to open and to maintain the airway patent are necessary to ensure efficient ventilation in an unconscious patient with an unprotected upper airway.

Since retention of skills after basic life support classes are notoriously low, a resuscitation tool should incorporate self-explanatory features to improve applicability, and to provide built-in safety. Thus, an option could be to ensure an open airway by the use of a built-in indicator within a ventilating device to confirm correct head extension. One possible approach may be to determine head positions that make an open airway likely, and then extrapolate these angles to a scale that could be integrated into a ventilating device; however, safe head extension needs to be determined first to prevent harm. The purpose of this study is to determine head position angles reflecting neutral position and maximal extension in unconscious supine children in a first step to design a ventilating device to optimise ventilation of an unprotected upper airway.

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Actual)

78

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • Austria
      • Innsbruck, Austria, 6020
        • Medical University Innsbruck

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

1 year to 10 years (Child)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Genders Eligible for Study

All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • ASA I and II children, 1-10 years of age

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Facial deformity
  • Pathological airway or cervical spine
  • BMI>35
  • History of gastric reflux

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Treatment
  • Allocation: Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Crossover Assignment
  • Masking: Single

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Active Comparator: 1
Children 1-5 years of age
Procedure: Ventilation
Mask ventilation in neutral and head extension position
Active Comparator: 2
Children 6-10 years of age
Procedure: Ventilation
Mask ventilation in neutral and head extension position

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Medical University Innsbruck

Investigators

  • Study Chair: Volker Wenzel, Prof., MD, MSc, Dept. of Anesthesia and Critical Care Medicine

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start

January 1, 2006

Study Completion (Actual)

December 1, 2006

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

September 18, 2007

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

September 19, 2007

First Posted (Estimate)

September 20, 2007

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Estimate)

March 26, 2009

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

March 25, 2009

Last Verified

March 1, 2009

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Other Study ID Numbers

  • AN2439

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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