Texas Fire Department Unveils Video Laryngoscope
RICHLAND HILLS -- 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.
