With the help of Northern Health Foundation, the Department of Anaesthesia has successfully obtained a grant for the CMAC video laryngoscope.

Dr David Tsang, Anaesthetist, said the idea for applying for a CMAC, a device used to safely manage airways, came as a result of the need to provide timely help across the whole hospital.

“One of the greatest challenges in airway management are usually not within theatre itself, but in other departments, like emergency and intensive care. In those departments, they already use CMAC, which is different from what we were using in theatre, so the idea was that if we obtain CMAC for theatre, it would improve airway management throughout the hospital,” he said.

That way, the theatre staff would be more familiar with the equipment in other departments, especially when staff are called to provide expert advice and management in other departments.

“Having a CMAC of our own means we wouldn’t be looking at the equipment for the first time in other departments,” he explained.

“In terms of obtaining the grant, we saw a unique opportunity to apply for the grant because the speech pathology department have been in the process of establishing an endoscopic evaluation of swallow service which uses the CMAC module. Because they already use it, this was a chance for us to put the same module to an additional purpose,” he said.

“The equipment arrived in late 2019, with a lot of help and support from the Northern Health Foundation. It is great that the Foundation recognised this opportunity to benefit two different departments with a shared piece of equipment. We are very grateful,” David added.

“Northern Health Foundation were supportive of the grant as it will be a shared resource with the speech pathology department, as well as aligning CMAC equipment across Northern Hospital. It also supports our medical staff when managing patients across departments and improving the patient experience,” said Yvonne Amos, Director Northern Health Foundation.

Featured image: Krystle Neophitou, ANUM of Anaesthetics and Dr David Tsang.