The second was an advanced airway course, for senior trainees and consultants, at the DIHS, Dundee. NAP4 made strong recommendations regarding improvements in airway training including the teaching of advanced and emergency airway techniques.2 This course teaches these airway skills using a mixture of part task simulators, animal models and cadavers to simulate patients. The cadavers used during this course were Thiel embalmed, a type of soft-fix tissue preservation, which retains more lifelike tissue colour and flexibility compared to other methods of preservation. Certainly during fibreoptic intubation, while concentrating on the screen, the lifelike colour and feel of the tissues meant the experience of performing the procedure seemed ‘real’.
The rest of the article by Susan Gibb can be found in the November issue of Anaesthesia News