Lopez etal in their article 'Awake intubation using the LMA-CTrachTM in patients with difficult airways' report on the use of the LMA CTrach - the intubating LMA with a fibreoptic system and a detachable LCD screen that allows real time view of the airway during orotracheal intubation, in a  cohort of 21  patients with either  a known difficult airway (n=9) or with physical features compatible with potential difficult airways (n=12). They report that the vocal cords could be seen in 19 patients, and intubation was successful in 20 with one failure.

I do not completely agree with the way they report their success rate. If an optical device (in this case the LMA-CTrach) is used and it is supposed to show the laryngeal aperture and it does not, this should not be considered a success but rather a failure of the device or the technique. Independent of whether the patient was breathing spontaneously or not, if they were able to intubate the patient 'blindly' they considered this a success. Once again, if a device or a technique is supposed to provide optical detection of the glottis and it fails to do so, this should be considered failure and not a difficult or a complicated use of the device. I think it is time that 'we line up the ducks' and start having clear cut definitions of success and failure of our airway devices. Failure to call things by what they are, and failure to establish clear cut definitions will only perpetuate our imprecision, and instead of the reliability of any device being elucidated further with a wonderful study as they they conducted, will remain questionable.