He is best known for proposing the eponymous Mallampati score in 1985, a non-invasive method to assess the ease of endotracheal intubation.
In 1971, he emigrated to the United States and began his training in anesthesiology at the Lahey Clinic in Boston, Massachusetts.
[2] In 1983, Mallampati published a letter describing a difficult intubation in a female patient whose mouth could open widely but whose tongue obstructed view of the faucial pillars and uvula.
[3] In 1985, alongside his colleagues, he published a paper in the Journal of the Canadian Anesthesia Society that involved 210 patients and studied the correlation between decreased visualisation of the soft palate, faucial pillars and uvula, and its association with the difficulty of intubation.
The study showed an inverse correlation and Mallampati proposed an eponymous classification to determine the ease of intubation.