RICHLAND HILLS — Richland Hills firefighter and paramedic Jason Miller tried to intubate a 20-year-old woman with a standard laryngoscope blade, but he couldn t get a tube down her throat.
Sarah Florez had been critically injured in a car wreck on Airport Freeway the morning of Oct. 26.
A helicopter ambulance nurse also tried and failed.
Miller then grabbed the department s new video laryngoscope, which comes equipped with a tiny high-resolution camera, and within seconds inserted the tube. Florez, a Haltom City mother who had a severe head injury, was taken to a Fort Worth hospital. She survived.
It s the type of result that the Richland Hills Fire Department hopes for with its $16,000 GlideScope Ranger, which gives paramedics an image of the larynx on a monitor.
“Failure is not an option for us,” Robert Potter, Richland Hills fire battalion chief, said Tuesday.
The department, which is one of the first in Texas to use the device, unveiled it last week after researching it this year after the City Council approved the purchase.
