Preventing Severe Coughing During Anesthesia Emergence: This Innovation Wins First Prize in the 'Starlight Program'

The "double-lumen endobronchial tube for preventing severe coughing during anesthesia emergence," developed by the team of Gu Weidong, director of the anesthesiology department at Huadong Hospital, has won first prize in the 14th Shanghai Medical Workers' Science and Technology Innovation "Starlight Program." Patients undergoing lung resection often suffer violent coughing while the double-lumen tube remains in place as they emerge from anesthesia. Starting from this common clinical problem, the team built a local anesthetic injection channel into the wall of the tube. Injecting local anesthetic through this channel before the end of surgery provides topical anesthesia of the trachea, markedly relieving the severe coughing triggered by the double-lumen tube during emergence and effectively preventing sharp swings in blood pressure, thereby safeguarding patients during emergence while improving comfort and satisfaction.

The technique is simple to perform, highly safe and reliably suppresses tube-induced cough. The patented tube has now been translated into clinical use and is expected to benefit more surgical patients.