Liu A, Bhasin Y, Bowyer M. A haptic-enabled simulator for cricothyroidotomy. Stud Health Technol Inform. 2005; 111:308-13

PMID: 15718750

Abstract

Cricothyroidotomy is an emergency procedure that is performed when the patient's airway is blocked, and less invasive attempts to clear it have failed. Cricothyroidotomy has been identified as an essential skill for military readiness. This training is relevant to more than 40,000 U.S. military medics, and thousands of civilian health care providers. Current training methods use animals, cadavers and plastic mannequins. Animal models do not have the correct anatomy. Cadavers do not have the correct physiology. Mannequins do not adequately cover the full range of anatomical variations. In this paper, we describe our effort to build a computer-based cricothyroidotomy simulator to address these problems.