Eficacia diagnóstica de un método predictivo de vía respiratoria anatómicamente difícil

introduction: an anatomically difficult airway is one of the more complex events challenged by anesthesiologist. there are tests that performed in front of patient offer valuable information. the more recent one is the upper lip bite. objectives: to identify the diagnostic effectiveness of abovementioned test as a predictive method of an anatomically difficult airway. material and methods: a prospective and descriptive study was conducted in patients requiring orotracheal general anesthesia for elective surgical procedures in the "hermanos ameijeiras" clinical surgical hospital. mallampatti and upper lib bite tests were performed in all of them. the laryngoscopy was assessed by cormack's and lehane's test. both tests were correlated by rho of spearman method determining the negative and positive value. results: from the study universe (624 patients) the 64,1% was of males sex. the great number of patients was located in the group aged 40-90 in both sexes (28,68). there was predominance of white race in the 76,4% of total. in relation to the weight, mean was located in 67,4%. applying the spearman's correlation coefficient it was noted that between the upper lip bite and the mallampatti'test there was a perfect direct correlation (0,373) and between the first one and the cormack and lehane test (0,424), with a significance value of 0,01 for both tests. conclusions: the upper lip bite test is a diagnostic effectiveness as predictive method for a anatomically difficult airway.