Guided tactile probing: a modified blind orotracheal intubation technique for the problem-oriented difficult airway.

We present ‘tactile probing’, a guided approach to blind orotracheal intubation to secure a problem-oriented anticipated difficult airway in a 55-year-old male patient scheduled for elective surgical tracheostomy for a postradiotherapy translaryngeal carcinoma. Standard techniques to gain the airway were inapplicable in this case and awake flexible fiberoscopy-aided intubation had already failed.