To the Editor:—
Dr. Alfery is the inventor of the CobraPLA™ (Engineered Medical Systems, Indianapolis, Indiana) and receives royalties on sales.
The recent letter proposing a classification system for what until now have been termed supraglottic airway devices represents another contribution to the field of airway management by its author, Dr. Joseph Brimacombe.1With the many products now available to practitioners wishing to use these more properly termed extraglottic devices, the criteria described for the system are both useful and logical. However, I would like to clarify that the cuffed, orally inserted hypopharyngeal airway CobraPLA™ (Engineered Medical Systems, Indianapolis, IN) is an abbreviated name for Cobra perilaryngeal airway and not pharyngeal lumen airway as listed in table 1. The device is termed perilaryngeal because the distal end of the airway (the snake-like appearing “cobra head”) abuts the aryepiglottic folds and thus seats itself directly along the entrance of the glottis.
Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Anesthesia Medical Group, Nashville, Tennessee. dalfery@dalfery.com