Article of the Month

Dear colleagues and airway enthusiast
The European Airway Management Society is introducing a new feature – Article of the Month.
This is designed to provide an opportunity to our members to highlight and share airway related topics and to open discussion forums in order to share clinical experience for the benefit of all EAMS members.
The Article of the Month will be made available via the EAMS website and is going to be accompanied by a short text (up to 200 words) explaining why is this article being selected.
EAMS members with login to eamshq.net will have access to the articles as full-text PDF's.
We would like to encourage our members to propose articles of the month. The short text accompanying the article will also be made available on line with full acknowledgement of the author who proposed the article.
The final decision to go on-line will be taken by the EAMS Board of Directors.

Best regards
R. Tino Greif
President of the European Airway Management Society

Dear EAMS community,

For a decade a manuscript looking at the impact of using a parachute for jumping out of a plane has been used to show the limitations of evidence-based medicine (Smith, G, Pell, J (2003) BMJ 327, 7429). Recently, a group of researches took this topic to the next level and performed a randomized, controlled trial to examine the impact of using a parachute vs. a backpack when jumping from aircraft. What has this to do with airway management? Please read this manuscript carefully! It draws some critical conclusions on how randomized trials need to be performed in order to address the clinical question or problem that counts. After reading this manuscript, you will never be reading an airway related article in the same way.

Enjoy this month's manuscript.

Robert W Yeh, Linda R Valsdottir, Michael W Yeh, Changyu Shen, Daniel B Kramer, Jordan B Strom, Eric A Secemsky, Joanne L Healy, Robert M Domeier, Dhruv S Kazi, Brahmajee K Nallamothu4 On behalf of the PARACHUTE Investigators: Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft: randomized controlled trial, BMJ 2018;363:k5094