Endotracheal Tubes with Patented Flex-Tip

The Flex-Tip tube series facil­i­tates smooth tube inser­tion dur­ing intu­ba­tion while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly reduc­ing the risk of trau­ma to anatom­i­cal struc­tures.

Avail­able sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­ture demon­strates that the use of Flex-Tip tubes results in sig­nif­i­cant­ly less bleed­ing and tis­sue trau­ma dur­ing nasal intu­ba­tion com­pared to stan­dard tubes ¹.  

On the oth­er hand, endo­tra­cheal tubes with sub­glot­tic suc­tion­ing have been shown in the lit­er­a­ture to reduce the risk of VAP (ven­ti­la­tor-asso­ci­at­ed pneu­mo­nia) by up to 50%^2,3,4,5, align­ing with the facil­i­ty’s strat­e­gy for pre­vent­ing VAP.

The avail­able suc­tion endo­tra­cheal tubes come in two ver­sions – with a stan­dard PVC cuff and with an ultra-thin polyurethane cuff. The aver­age thick­ness of the polyurethane cuff is only 10 microns, com­pared to 50–60 microns for PVC cuffs. This allows for the use of low­er cuff infla­tion pres­sure, result­ing in a reduced risk of tra­cheal injury⁶. Addi­tion­al­ly, the struc­ture of the polyurethane min­i­mizes the occur­rence of folds in the cuff, there­by reduc­ing the risk of secre­tions leak­ing past the cuff.

[1] Pri­or S, Heaton J, Jatana KR, Rashid RG. Park­er flex-tip and stan­dard-tip endo­tra­cheal tubes: a com­par­i­son dur­ing naso­tra­cheal intu­ba­tion. Anesth Prog. 2010;57(1):18–24. doi:10.2344/0003–3006-57.1.18 
[2] Dez­fu­lian C, Sho­ja­nia K, Col­lard HR et al (2005) Sub­glot­tic secre­tion drainage for pre­vent­ing ven­ti­la­tor-asso­ci­at­ed pneu­mo­nia: a meta-analy­sis. Am J Med 118:11–18 
[3] Lacher­ade JC, De Jonghe B, Guezen­nec P et al (2010) Inter­mit­tent sub­glot­tic secre­tion drainage­and ven­ti­la­tor-asso­ci­at­ed pneu­mo­nia: a mul­ti­cen­ter tri­al. Am J Respir Crit Care Med 182:910–917 
[4] Muscedere J, Rewa O, McK­ech­nie K et al (2011) Sub­glot­tic secre­tion drainage for the pre­ven­tion of ven­ti­la­tor-asso­ci­at­ed pneu­mo­nia: a sys­tem­at­ic review and meta-analy­sis. Crit Care Med 39:1985–1991 
[5] Wang F, Bo L, Tang L et al (2012) Sub­glot­tic secre­tion drainage for pre­vent­ing ven­ti­la­tor-asso­ci­at­ed pneu­mo­nia: an updat­ed meta-analy­sis of ran­dom­ized con­trolled tri­als. J Trau­ma Acute Care Surg 72:1276–1285  
[6] Dul­lenkopf A, Schmitz A, Frei M, Ger­ber AC, Weiss M. Air leak­age around endo­tra­cheal tube cuffs. Eur J Anaes­the­si­ol. 2004;21(6):448–453. doi:10.1017/s0265021504006064