Ronald Cormack
Ronald ‘Ronnie’ Sidney Cormack (1930 – )
Co-authored a paper with John Lehane in 1984 which formed the foundation of the Cormack-Lehane laryngoscopy grades. The paper has a citation score of >1600 making it one of the most quoted papers in the science.
Biography
- Born in 1930 in Rangoon, Burma where his surgeon father was head of military services
- 1961 – Graduated medicine from Oxford university
- Senior lecturer at Bristol
- 1972 – MRC unit at Northwick Park Hospital, Harrow in charge of the obstetric service. He worked with John Lehane from 1978 and together they worked on a system of teaching students intubation in Obstetric patients. This resulted in their famous classification of the laryngeal view into the four grades.
- 1984 – Co-author of the Cormack-Lehane scoring system, a simple classification system for grading direct laryngoscopy in Anaesthesia
- Early retirement to focus on his research interests and writing
- 2013 – DAS Macewen Medal from the Difficult Airway Society
Medical Eponyms
Cormack-Lehane scoring system (1984)
Classification describes the best glottic view possible at laryngoscopy:
- Grade I: complete glottis visible
- Grade II: anterior glottis not seen
- Grade III: epiglottis seen, but not glottis
- Grade IV: epiglottis not seen
Major Publications
- Cormack RS, Lehane J. Difficult tracheal intubation in obstetrics. Anaesthesia. 1984; 39(11): 1105-1111.
- Cormack RS. Cormack-Lehane classification revisited. Br J Anaesth. 2010; 105(6): 867-868.
References
Biography
- Ronnie Cormack. DAS Medal, 2012
- Maltby JR. Cormack-Lehane laryngoscopy grades. In: Notable Names in Anaesthesia. The Choir Press, 2013: 43-45
Eponymous terms
- Samsoon GLT, Young JRB. Difficult tracheal intubation: a retrospective study, Anaesthesia 1987; 42: 487
- Wilson ME et al. Predicting difficult intubation. Br J Anaesth. 1988; 61(2): 211-216.
- Bond A. Obesity and difficult intubation. Anaesth Intensive Care. 1993; 21(6): 828-830.
- Laryngoscopy technique. Anaesthesia UK
- Krage R, van Rijn C, van Groeningen D, Loer SA, Schwarte LA, Schober P. Cormack-Lehane classification revisited. Br J Anaesth. 2010; 105(2): 220-227
- Pearce AC, Duggan LV, El-Boghdadly K. Making the grade: has Cormack and Lehane grading stood the test of time? Anaesthesia. 2021; 76(5): 705-709
eponym
the person behind the name
