Evaluation of four airway training manikins as patient simulators for the insertion of eight types of supraglottic airway devices

We evaluated the performance of four currently available manikins: Airway Management Trainer (Ambu, UK), Airway Trainer (Laerdal, Norway), Airsim (Trucorp, Ireland), 'Bill 1' (VBM, Germany), with eight supraglottic airway devices: Airway Management Device, Cobra Perilaryngeal Airway, Combitube, i-Gel, Laryngeal Tube, Laryngeal Tube Disposable, Laryngeal Tube Suction II and Streamlined Liner of the Pharynx Airway. Ten anaesthetists inserted each supraglottic airway device twice into each manikin. Each insertion was scored and ranked. Manikin score and rank data showed statistically significant overall performance differences. Post hoc analysis showed the Trucorp manikin performed best, followed by the Laerdal manikin. No one manikin performed best for all individual supraglottic airway devices. The Trucorp manikin performed adequately for all supraglottic airway devices. Comparing supraglottic airway devices, i-Gel insertion was significantly the easiest. Our results show that manikin performance for supraglottic airway device insertion is unequal, which has implications for selecting manikins for supraglottic airway device training and for manikin studies assessing performance of supraglottic airway devices.