| No More Post-Surgery Sore Throat
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Laryngeal Mask Airway products are often the cause of a sore throat. Many people think it’s because of the anesthesia or the body’s temperature when having surgery. Realistically, it is because the anesthesiologist is using a modern disposable laryngeal mask airway made from PVC. An laryngeal mask airway consists of a tube with an inflatable cuff that is inserted into the pharynx. They cause less pain and coughing than an endotracheal tube, and are much easier to insert without damaging body parts like vocal chords. The issue that every anesthesiologist or patient should ask is what is the inflatable cuff on the laryngeal mask airway made of: Silicone or PVC?
The inflatable cuff on the original laryngeal mask airway was made of high-grade silicone. While this makes for a comfortable post-surgery patient, it is not much for cost-effectiveness. Therefore, to make them more affordable, the manufacturers of the laryngeal mask airway made them autoclavable (a process in which a stainless steel surgical instrument is sterilized) up to 40-50 times. Unfortunately, the process to autoclave or sterilize laryngeal mask airways is fairly difficult and many times not completed properly. Plus, to save money, hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers were using them far more than the suggested 40-50 times. The end result of all of this were questions of patient cross-contamination.
Again, manufacturers of laryngeal mask airways got smart and realized they could sell disposable laryngeal masks made of much less expensive PVC, instead of silicone. Quickly, many hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers began moving towards disposable PVC laryngeal mask airways. Finally, the industry thought it had conquered having an easy, safe airway management technique that reduced the risk of cross-contamination. Unfortunately, very quickly more and more patients started having post-surgery sore throats. What no one considered was that PVC, while a safe and reliable material, does not react well to changes in temperature. When it heats up, it tends to expand. When it cools down, it tends to retract. Because when a patient is under anesthesia their body temperature drops quickly and then is increasing slowly, you have a laryngeal mask airway that is constantly trying to expand within the patient’s throat. After conducting studies, anesthesiologists found that this expansion causes post-surgery sore throats.
Finally, a large producer of laryngeal mask airways, Flexicare (a British company) solved the problem. They have designed the first successful disposable silicone laryngeal mask airway. While many people are starting to move to this product and purchasing it at laryngealmaskairway.net many people are still a little worried about the price difference at less than $5 USD per surgery. Hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers who have not switched to Flexicare’s LarySeal Blue product, the only disposable silicone laryngeal mask airway, need to ask their clinical administrators, physicians, surgeons, purchasing managers and the rest of their staff members if they are willing to risk patient contamination or patient comfort for a difference of less than $5 per sugery.
I know the answer to the question: when I go into surgery I want a product that does the most to reduce patient cross-contamination while doing the least to sacrifice patient post-op comfort. Next time you go in for surgery ask your surgeon or anesthesiologist what product they are using. If they are not using Flexicare’s LarySeal Blue disposable silicone laryngeal mask airway then I hope that you throat does not bother you post-surgery. And, if they are still using a reusable, classic laryngeal mask airway, I would consider finding another facility to have surgery in.
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