The Association of Body Mass Index with Airway Indices for depiction of difficult Airway-A Demographic Study.

Introduction: Airway management is a basic aspect of anesthesia practice and critical care medicine. The relationship between airway indices and BMI mostly seen in terms of obesity, there is also conflicting evidence regarding this. So this study will try to resolve the disagreement in result associating obesity with difficult airway and also envisage the broader aspect by finding association between BMI and airway indices. Material and Methods:Two hundred adult participants aged between 20 to 55 yrs. of age of both sexes going through pre-anaesthtic check-up (PAC) for variety of surgeries at MIMS, Barabanki, were enrolled in this quantitative prospective observational study after meeting inclusion and exclusion criteria. Consecutive sampling method was used and sample size calculated using Taro-Yamane formula. During the PAC, data regarding various parameters such as demographic detail, BMI and airway indices were collected. BMI, Age and Sex were the independent variables and all airway indiceswere the dependent variables. The data collected for the study was continuous and categorical. Subsequently data was coded. The BMI and airway association was analyzed by using STATA version 12. Continuous data were presented as mean ± SD and ordered data were presented as percentage and analyzed by ordered logistic regression ('p' value, 'z' value and co-efficient). Results: The mean of age, height, TMD, HMD and SMD were comparable in all the four BMI categories. The mean of weight, BMI, NC and HLM were increasing from underweight to obese. BMI association with NC, MPG, HLM, WSand H and N movementwere statistically significant and having 'p' value = 0.000 (for all indices) and 'z' value = 9.94,8.18, 7.53, 6.29 and 6.2respectively. BMI weakly associated with SM, SMD and ULBT. BMI association with IIG, TMD and HMD were statistically not significant and having 'p' value > 0.05 (for all indices). All airway indices have positive co-efficient except SMD, which have negative co-efficient. Conclusion: The findings confirm that there were association between BMI with NC,MPG, HLM, WS and H and N movementat p value = 0.000 which is significant and z value > 6 and hence corroborates that difficult airway could be anticipated with these variables. Among all individual airway indicators Neck circumference was strongly associated with BMI followed by MPG. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]