Intubation

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The insertion of a tube into the trachea to maintain an open airway and facilitate breathing, typically during anesthesia or in critically ill patients
2. The procedure involving the placement of a tube into the airway to ensure proper ventilation and oxygen supply, often performed in emergency situations or surgical procedures
3. A medical technique that encompasses the insertion of a tube into the respiratory tract to support or initiate breathing, particularly in patients with compromised airways

Etymology: Joseph O'Dwyer, an American physician, is probably the person who coined this term, sometime between 1880 and 1884, and it spread widely in print by 1887. He was working on a problem that had killed many children: diphtheria, where the throat swells shut and the patient suffocates. Before O'Dwyer's work, the usual remedy was a tracheotomy, an incision into the windpipe, which was dangerous and often fatal. O'Dwyer devised a way to pass a tube through the mouth or nose and down into the windpipe without cutting into the neck. The word is built from the Latin "intubare," meaning "to insert a tube," formed from "in-" ("into") and "tubus" ("tube" or "pipe"). English medicine and surgery drew heavily on Latin for new technical terms in this period, so the coinage fits the pattern of its time. The term was new because the procedure was new; the sense of inserting a tube into a body passage is the same as the Latin verb's basic meaning.

Synonyms: insertion, tube placement, airway management