Woodall NM, Cook TM. Br J Anaesth 2011; 106 (2): 266-271
There are 309 NHS hospitals that carry out surgery. In this study, a volunteer from each of these hospitals reported the main airway management technique used in every general anaesthetic within a specified two-week period. This data was then used to estimate the annual use of various airway devices. The total number of procedures was 114,904, leading to an annual estimate of 2.9 million. Supraglottic airways were used in 56.2% of cases. The i-gel® was the second most popular choice of supraglottic airway with 4,574 cases. This equates to 7.1% of supraglottic airways and 4% of all devices used.
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