By Domingo Ramirez Jr.
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
RICHLAND HILLS, Texas — Richland Hills firefighter and paramedic Jason Miller tried to intubate a 20-year-old woman with a standard laryngoscope blade, but he couldn’t get a tube down her throat.
Sarah Florez had been critically injured in a car wreck on Airport Freeway the morning of Oct. 26.
A helicopter ambulance nurse also tried and failed.
Miller then grabbed the department’s new video laryngoscope, which comes equipped with a tiny high-resolution camera, and within seconds inserted the tube. Florez, a Haltom City mother who had a severe head injury, was taken to a Fort Worth hospital. She survived.
It’s the type of result that the Richland Hills Fire Department hopes for with its $16,000 GlideScope Ranger, which gives paramedics an image of the larynx on a monitor.
“Failure is not an option for us,” Robert Potter, Richland Hills fire battalion chief, said Tuesday.
The department, which is one of the first in Texas to use the device, unveiled it last week after researching it this year after the City Council approved the purchase.
Fire officials said that each year, they will intubate about 15 patients who have suffered trauma. The department answers about 1,300 medical calls a year.
For years, paramedics have used the standard laryngoscope blade kit for intubation. It costs about $400. Paramedics had to suction blood or saliva out of a patient’s airway and then insert the blade by pulling back the patient’s head and blindly inserting a tube into the lung.
“It can be very difficult because of obstructions and the anatomy of a person,” said Dr. Roy K. Yamada, who is the emergency medical services director of 11 Tarrant County cities including Richland Hills. “This gives paramedics a 99 percent success rate.”
The video laryngoscope monitor is waterproof and about the size of a paperback book, with a screen the size of a large credit card. The images are in color.
The camera has an anti-fogging mechanism to give paramedics a clearer view.
“It took only seconds,” Miller said Tuesday, referring to the intubation of Florez. “There were others around me who couldn’t believe how fast it was.”
The GlideScope’s rechargeable battery can last 15 hours. The department will be able to use the device for five to 10 years, fire officials said.