Over nearly four decades in clinical anesthesiology practice, Dr. Hoyt Nye witnessed remarkable advances in patient safety — from pharmacologic innovation to the growing use of regional nerve blocks to video laryngoscopy — even as the acuity of surgical patients steadily increased. Yet one part of general anesthesia remained largely unchanged: the extubation process.

Early in his career, Dr. Nye repeatedly found patients with residual secretions and blood in the airway that standard suctioning could not fully clear — the catheters, though properly sized, simply lacked the lumen to remove thick, viscous secretions. He discovered that by aligning the suction tubing directly with the proximal end of the endotracheal tube as its distal tip cleared the glottis, he could use the tube itself as a large-bore suction catheter, clearing far more of the hypopharyngeal secretions than conventional suctioning allowed.

The technique worked, but the fit between tubing and tube was never secure. So, roughly eight years ago, Dr. Nye set out to design an adaptor that would create a snug, reliable seal between the two. That adaptor became CLEAR AirWAY.