LHP – E74 – What Even IS First Pass Success

The EMS Lighthouse Project

What even is FPS? There's been a long-running argument about the definition of FPS. By argument, I mean mostly established in the literature, with some people not liking it. FPS is successful ET passage through the cords within 1 attempt at laryngoscopy or when the blade passes the teeth.

That definition worked well when we were using direct laryngoscopy, where the hard part of intubation was visualization and the easy part was tube passage. But does it still hold in the age of VL, where visualization is easy, and tube passage is the hard part? We discuss a paper on this episode that proposes a new definition that perhaps better meets the needs of the VL era.

Citation:

Trent SA, Driver BE, Prekker ME, et al. Defining Successful Intubation on the First Attempt Using Both Laryngoscope and Endotracheal Tube Insertions: A Secondary Analysis of Clinical Trial Data. Annals of Emergency Medicine. Published online April 2023:S0196064423002135. doi:10.1016/j.annemergmed.2023.03.021