Vascular ring in an extremely low birth weight infant.

Vascular rings due to aortic arch anomalies can be a major cause of tracheoesophageal obstruction in infants. But there is no report of vascular ring in an extremely low birth weight (ELBW) infant. This is a report of an infant with birth weight of 560 g, who has not diagnosed vascular ring until 6 months of age because of asymptomatic process by prolonged tracheal intubation. The patient was treated for double aortic arch with tracheomalacia surgically by simple division of the atretic left arch and the ligamentum arteriosus, aortopexy and tracheostomy before reaching full recovery at 3 years of age. We reported our management of vascular rings in the ELBW infant. This case suggested that the difficulty of extubation in ELBW infants in spite of the improvement of respiratory condition should raise a suspicion of the tracheal compression by other lesions such as vascular rings.