Rather than focusing predominantly on failure prevention, the new 2025 Difficult Airway Society guidelines for unanticipated difficult tracheal intubation represent a conceptual evolution in airway management, prioritising continuous oxygenation, timely escalation, human factors, and a broader understanding of airway difficulty that incorporates physiological and contextual complexity.
Recent Safety-II focused analysis of airway incidents reported to webAIRS has shown that many events that had the potential for catastrophic outcomes did not progress to patient harm because clinicians adapted effectively to evolving or suboptimal clinical conditions .
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