NCT05983666: PATO

POCUS ASSESSMENT FOR TRACHEAL VS OESOPHAGEAL INTUBATION

Recruiting now Last updated 14 April 2026

What this trial tests

trial testing Ultrasound Oesophageal Intubation in Intubation Complication in 200 participants. Currently enrolling.

Timeline

1 July 2023

Primary endpoint
1 July 2026

1 August 2026

Quick facts

Lead sponsor	Clinica Universidad de Navarra, Universidad de Navarra
Status	Recruiting now
Study type	OBSERVATIONAL
Enrollment	200
Start date	1 July 2023
Primary completion	1 July 2026
Estimated completion	1 August 2026
Sites	1 location across Spain

Drugs / interventions tested

• Ultrasound Oesophageal Intubation

Conditions studied

• Intubation Complication — all drugs for Intubation Complication →

Sponsor

Clinica Universidad de Navarra, Universidad de Navarra

Who can join

Adults 18 to 90, any sex, with Intubation Complication. Patients with the condition only — healthy volunteers not accepted.

Sponsor's own description

The clinical importance of airway management has gained prominence in the last decade in most scientific societies with the aim of improving the standard of care.

The WHO has focused guidelines for "Safety in Surgery", which attempt to encompass all methods that predict and recognise airway management risk and should be applied by the surgical team, and has therefore created and implemented a surgical checklist that can be useful in reducing the risk of unidentified difficulties.

The same suggestion has been included in the Helsinki Declaration on Patient Safety in Anaesthesiology, signed by most European entities in cooperation with the European Society of Anaesthesiology (ESA), the European Board of Anaesthesiology (EBA-UEMS), and the World Federation of Societies of Anaesthesiology (WFA).

Confirmation of correct endotracheal tube (ET) placement is a crucial step in airway management, as unrecognised oesophageal intubation can have catastrophic consequences. Numerous methods are used to verify correct ET placement, including visual confirmation of tube passage through the vocal cords during laryngoscopy, chest wall expansion during ventilation, visualisation of the tracheal rings and carina using a flexible bronchoscope, auscultation, capnometry, capnography and chest radiography. These techniques vary in their degree of precision. Although capnography is considered the gold standard for confirming tracheal intubation, it has some important limitations.

In recent years, ultrasonography has been introduced as the fifth pillar of the physical examination of the patient: inspection, palpation, percussion, auscultation and insonation. For airway assessment and management, Point-of-Care UltraSound (PoCUS) has been incorporated into routine clinical practice, answering open diagnostic questions, aiding in differential diagnosis and guiding procedures.

Thus, investigators propose a simple, quick and easy-to-learn approach for the interpretation of ultrasound imaging findings during airway management.

Publications & conference data

No peer-reviewed publications indexed yet for this trial.