Evaluation of upper lip bite test (ULBT) for prediction of difficult intubations

The aim of this study is to compare the Reliability and validity of ULBT Method with Cormac and Malampati, for Anticipation on Recognition of Difficult Intubation for Patients Calling on Farabi Hospital During the 1392-1393 Period. In some patients with serious difficulties, difficult intubation is more probable and there is no need for further tests. The main problem is to diagnose the probability of difficult intubation in patients with no apparent signs. At the moment the gold standard method for recognition of difficult intubation is Cormac-Leihan, which is invasive and need to be in operating room, therefore finding a simpler way is remedial. In this study it was decided to compare ULBT as a simple, low cost and no side effects method with more common ones for predicting this phenomena like Cormac and Malampathy and LLBT.
95 patients whom needed general anesthesia in farabi hospital in 1393 were taken for this study. These patients visited by an anesthesiologist before surgery and all demographic informations, ULBT, LLBT, Malampathy measures were recorded. But the Cormac measurments were performed by another anesthesiologist.
Sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values, and accuracy were 75.8%, 91.7%, 35.3%, 95,2% and 89.8%, respectively, for the ULBT, and 79.3%, 63.7%, 19.2%, 95.8% and 61.2% respectively, for TMD. Specificity and positive predictive value and accuracy were found to be significantly higher for the ULBT than for mallampati (p We conclude that the specificity, positive predictive value and accuracy of the ULBT is significantly higher than the mallampati test then is reliable for screening of difficult intubation. it is signify that a positive ULBT is more predictive of a difficult airway than mallampati test.