The role of supraglottic airway devices for caesarean section under general anaesthesia. A scoping literature review with a proposed algorithm for the appropriate use of supraglottic airway devices for caesarean sections

Abstract

This review aims to assess the published evidence on airway management with a supraglottic airway device (SGA) for general anaesthesia in patients requiring a caesarean section. Physiological changes during pregnancy can make airway management in parturients challenging. At the same time, pregnant patients are at risk of pulmonary aspiration due to hormonal and mechanical alterations. The standard airway management for parturients undergoing caesarean section is rapid sequence induction followed by tracheal intubation. Evidence exists that using second-generation SGA devices is well tolerated and effective in selected patients. In this review, we provide an overview of the existing evidence and provide an algorithm to make an evidence-based clinical decision on the use of SGA devices. An online literature search was performed in Medline, Embase, PubMed, Emcare, Cochrane Library and CINAHL. The search terms used were ‘supraglottic airway’, ‘supraglottic airway device’, ‘supraglottic airway management’, ‘supraglottic tube’, ‘i-gel’, laryngeal mask’, ‘laryngeal mask airway’, ‘LMA’, ‘SGA’, ‘Proseal’, ‘Supreme’, ‘obstetric surgery’, ‘obstetric operation’, ‘general anaesthesia’, ‘caesarean’ or ‘caesarean section’, ‘abdominal delivery’. Full-text articles in English, Dutch and French were included. Case reports and studies in which the surgery was not a caesarean section were excluded. The initial search yielded 815 results. Following screening, deduplication and removal of publications that were unrelated to the topic or did not fit the inclusion criteria, 13 manuscripts were included in our analysis. A total of 7722 patients were described in the articles included. In the majority of manuscripts, second-generation SGA devices were used. There were seven cases of failed insertion and a need for conversion to tracheal intubation; first-generation SGA devices were used in these cases. There were no cases of pulmonary aspiration, and only one case of gastric regurgitation was described. Growing evidence suggests that the use of second-generation SGA devices might be well tolerated as the primary method for securing the airway for caesarean sections requiring general anaesthesia, in selected patients with a low risk for aspiration and difficult intubation.