Emergency airway puncture

•	Encyclopedia Home
•	Surgeries A-Z
•	Read Spanish version

Images

Emergency airway...

Cricoid cartilag...

Emergency airway...

•	Abdominal thrusts
•	Breathing difficulty
•	Tracheostomy

More Features

•	Printer-friendly version

Emergency airway puncture

Definition

Emergency airway puncture is the placement of a hollow needle into the airway through the skin of the throat. It is done to treat life-threatening choking.

Alternative Names

Needle cricothyrotomy

Description

Emergency airway puncture is done in an emergency situation, when someone is choking and all other efforts to assist with breathing have failed.

A hollow needle or tube can be inserted into the throat, just below the Adam's apple (thyroid cartilage), into the airway. The needle passes through the skin between the thyroid cartilage and the cricoid cartilage.
In a hospital, before inserting the needle, a small cut may be made in the skin and the membrane between the thyroid and cricoid cartilages.

Why the Procedure Is Performed

A needle cricothyrotomy is an emergency procedure to relieve an airway obstruction until surgery can be done to place a breathing tube (tracheostomy or surgical cricothyrotomy).

If the airway blockage occurs with trauma to the head, neck, or spine, care must be taken to avoid further injury to the person.

Risks

Risks for this procedure include:

Injury to the voice box (larynx), thyroid gland, or esophagus

Risks for any surgery are:

Bleeding
Infection

Outlook (Prognosis)

How well the person does depends on the cause of the airway blockage and how quickly the person receives proper breathing support. Emergency airway puncture provides enough breathing support for only a very short period of time.

References

Cavallone LF, Cattano D, Piacentini AGG. Percutaneous emergency airway access. In: Hagberg C, ed. Hagberg and Benumof's Airway Management. 5th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier; 2023:chap 28.

Hebert RB, Thomas D. Cricothyrotomy and percutaneous translaryngeal ventilation. In: Roberts JR, Custalow CB, Thomsen TW, eds. Roberts and Hedges' Clinical Procedures in Emergency Medicine and Acute Care. 7th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier; 2019:chap 6.

Review Date: 10/7/2024
Reviewed By: Jesse Borke, MD, CPE, FAAEM, FACEP, Attending Physician at Kaiser Permanente, Orange County, CA. Also reviewed by David C. Dugdale, MD, Medical Director, Brenda Conaway, Editorial Director, and the A.D.A.M. Editorial team.

The information provided herein should not be used during any medical emergency or for the diagnosis or treatment of any medical condition. A licensed medical professional should be consulted for diagnosis and treatment of any and all medical conditions. Links to other sites are provided for information only -- they do not constitute endorsements of those other sites. No warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, is made as to the accuracy, reliability, timeliness, or correctness of any translations made by a third-party service of the information provided herein into any other language.

© 1997- A.D.A.M., a business unit of Ebix, Inc. Any duplication or distribution of the information contained herein is strictly prohibited.

All content on this site including text, images, graphics, audio, video, data, metadata, and compilations is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. You may view the content for personal, noncommercial use. Any other use requires prior written consent from Ebix. You may not copy, reproduce, distribute, transmit, display, publish, reverse-engineer, adapt, modify, store beyond ordinary browser caching, index, mine, scrape, or create derivative works from this content. You may not use automated tools to access or extract content, including to create embeddings, vectors, datasets, or indexes for retrieval systems. Use of any content for training, fine-tuning, calibrating, testing, evaluating, or improving AI systems of any kind is prohibited without express written consent. This includes large language models, machine learning models, neural networks, generative systems, retrieval-augmented systems, and any software that ingests content to produce outputs. Any unauthorized use of the content including AI-related use is a violation of our rights and may result in legal action, damages, and statutory penalties to the fullest extent permitted by law. Ebix reserves the right to enforce its rights through legal, technological, and contractual measures.