Retention of pediatric bag-mask ventilation efficacy skill by inexperienced medical student resuscitators using standard bag-mask ventilation masks, pocket masks, and blob masks

Objective To measure the ventilation efficacy with three single-sized mask types on infant and child manikin models. Methods Medical students were recruited as study subjects inasmuch as they are inexperienced resuscitators. They were taught proper bag-mask ventilation (BMV) according to the American Heart Association guidelines on an infant and a child manikin. Subjects completed a BMV attempt successfully using the adult standard mask (to simulate the uncertainty of mask selection), pocket mask, and blob mask. Each attempt consisted of 5 ventilations assessed by chest rise of the manikin. Study subjects were asked which mask was easiest to use. Four to six weeks later, subjects repeated the procedure with no instructions (to simulate an emergency BMV encounter without immediate pre-encounter teaching). Results Forty-six volunteer subjects were studied. During the first attempt, subjects preferred the standard and blob masks over the pocket mask. For the second attempt, the blob mask was preferred over the standard mask, and few liked the pocket mask. Using the standard, blob, and pocket masks on the child manikin, 39, 42, and 20 subjects, respectively, were able to achieve adequate ventilation. Using the standard, blob, and pocket masks on the infant manikin, 45, 45, and 11 subjects, respectively, were able to achieve adequate ventilation. Conclusions Both the standard and blob masks are more effective than the pocket mask at achieving adequate ventilation on infant and child manikins in this group of inexperienced medical student resuscitators, who most often preferred the blob mask.