Spontaneous cervical and mediastinal emphysema in asthma.

Patients with mediastinal emphysema and free air in the cervical region often present to an emergency medicine department, where an otolaryngologist-head and neck surgeon may be consulted for a surgical opinion. These occasions underscore the necessity that the disease be thoroughly understood and that conservative management be executed. Two patients with asthma, a 16-year-old boy and a 20-year-old man, were found on roentgenograms to have retropharyngeal free air and mediastinal emphysema. They were treated conservatively, and both recovered rapidly.