Initial experience with a wire-guided endobronchial blockade to achieve one-lung ventilation.

We report our initial experience with a wire-guided endobronchial blockade, which is a new method to achieve one-lung ventilation with a conventional endotracheal tube. The strong points of this device are its ease of use and the fast training, the possibility of setting it up after the patient was positioned in lateral decubitus position or in the course of intervention a s well as the maintenance of ventilation during insertion. Its weak points are the lack of a paediatric model and the quality of the lung collapse whi ch requires a particular operation to be perfect. (C) 2001 Editions scienti fiques et medicales Elsevier SAS.