The Difficult Airway Course Vs Levitan's Practical Airway

[emedres]

Has anyone taken one or both of these courses? I'm a third year EM resident and am comfortable with routine airways. We have a fellow resident who took the Difficult Airway course by Walls in Boston (he goes around the country with the course as well) and really liked it. It's didactics combined with skilled lab with pigs.
The other option is the Levitan course which from what I can tell is equally priced but only offered in Baltimore. The Levitan course is very small participants- only 18 and has didactics then skill labs with unembalmed cadavers demonstrating a bunch of airway techniques- bouggie, glidescope, intubating lma, etc. One of my attendings took this course and raved about it.
Has anyone taken both or one and could they recommend either as a resident? My program will pay for the course, so I just want to get the most out of a course as possible.

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[WilcoWorld]

I can't speak to either of the above courses, but for those out west Airway 911 (airway911.com) is a good option as well. It also has didactics and a lot of skills stations. Actually, I would steer clear of any airway course that doesn't have skills stations.

 

[leorl]

I don't really know the levitan airway course, but the difficult airway course with Walls is brilliant, as well as their website which features very nice illustrative videos featuring Walls and his colleagues (airwayworld.com) . And of course the difficult airway manual is a nice informative read too. I'm not sure about the other courses, but you can't really go wrong with the difficult airway course

 

[Tiger26]

Having done the Levitan but not the Walls course, I'll contribute pros and cons--

Pro:
-Airway expert, as they both are
-Developed his airway camera, which is really cool
-Uses cadavers, which make it somewhat realistic
-Lots of airways toys (mcgrath, stortz, glidescope, bougies, crics, airtraqs, and a bunch more

Cons:
-Way too much airway science (i.e. lots of time looking at angles and architecture on a level of way more detail than necessary)
-Way too many toys (I only use a laryngoscope then glidescope or bougie if necessary)
-Having done a lot of intubations before residency, I don't really feel like I learned that much from the course
-Cadavers still aren't realistic enough
-Would like to have seen and had the chance to do awake fiberoptics, which the Walls course may or may not have (i have no idea).

 

[joeDO2]

sorry to dig up this old thread but I have signed up for the august 2-3 levitan course in baltimore. wondering if anyone had some more recent feedback or is planning on attending?

 

[leviathan]

sorry to dig up this old thread but I have signed up for the august 2-3 levitan course in baltimore. wondering if anyone had some more recent feedback or is planning on attending?

I might go if I can get a few days off my August rotation. I have seen some Levitan stuff on Scott Weingart's website and thought it was great.

 

[Tiger26]

Having now done both courses, I think they both have a lot of utility but are very different.

The Levitan course is much more about the physical act of getting the ETT in place and allows you to use cadavers and multiple airway devices to experiment, along with teaching a variety of tricks/tips to improve your airway view.

The Ron Walls course is very cerebral, in the sense that it's more useful for thinking about airway in the sense of the entire resuscitation and presents the whole spectrum of scenarios that may need an ETT (pregnant, angioedema, obese, septic, peds, trauma, etc.) You get to play with all the devices, but I gained much more in terms of how I plan out an individualized airway algorithm for every scenario regarding devices and drugs.

Overall, I can honestly say that I use techniques every shift that I learned from both courses and that they supplement each other nicely. Even if you do one, I think you can benefit tremendously from the other.

 

[joeDO2]

I might go if I can get a few days off my August rotation. I have seen some Levitan stuff on Scott Weingart's website and thought it was great.

yes, seeing his material on emcrit was what prompted me to sign up.

and thanks tiger for the review of both courses

 

[jendc08]

On a quasi related note, has anyone tried the airway app? the pictures look cool on iTunes but $14.99...

 

[Arcan57]

On a mostly unrelated note, when using the glidescope it's really important to put the blade in the vallecula. I usually use the Mac as a Miller which leads to great views of the cords with a glidescope but a complete inability to direct the ETT thru the cords because of the extreme curve. Not sure how I made it through residency without realizing this, but my glidescope success rate has improved markedly since being shown this.

 

[leviathan]

I'm on anesthesia and I've been using a lot of tricks I saw on Emcrit while intubating, and they really do make a difference! Really awesome.