Surgical treatment of benign tracheal stenosis in adults.

Benign tracheal stenosis is responsible for considerable morbidity, and it is difficult to treat. Our objective is to present the results of surgical treatment. This was a retrospective chart review from the tertiary care center on Head and Neck Surgery in Hospital Ana Costa. We performed a retrospective review of 19 adult patients who underwent circumferential tracheal resection with end-to-end anastomosis from 1997 to 2003. Seventeen cases were caused by prolonged endotracheal intubation and tracheotomy; whereas, an invasive papillary thyroid carcinoma occurred in the other two. A minimum follow-up period of 12 months was considered for the final evaluation of the results. The patient ages varied from 18 to 70 years (median, 29 years). There were 16 men. In 6 patients, a T-shaped tube was kept in place because of extensive disease. The stenosis distance to the vocal folds varied from 11 to 22 mm. All the patients presented grades III or IV of narrowing. Four to eight rings were resected. The sleeve resection gave 89.5% success: one failure and one death. The success rate of tracheal resection with end-to-end anastomosis was 89.5%.