Surgical treatment of nontumoral stenoses of the upper airway.

BACKGROUND

After 1970, the widespread use of nasotracheal intubation, avoiding tracheostomy and its pitfalls, resulted in more frequent laryngeal or laryngotracheal stenoses, which required more complex and sometimes multistaged procedures.

METHODS

A series of 217 nontumoral stenoses of the upper airway were treated following the same therapeutic principles in the period 1978 to 1992. Two hundred one of them were iatrogenic postintubation strictures (92%); the others were posttraumatic (7), idiopathic (5), and various (4).

RESULTS

One hundred twenty (55%) were tracheal stenoses and treated by resection and primary end-to-end anastomosis with 117 excellent or good results and three deaths. Length of the stenosis, old age, neuropsychological sequelae, and overall poor respiratory status of the patients made up the remaining difficulties in the treatment. Ninety-seven (45%) were laryngotracheal stenoses with much more complex surgical indications: 57 patients underwent tracheal and subglottic resection and anastomosis with 56 successes and one death, 7 had laryngotracheal resection and anastomosis with total cricoidectomy and consequently laryngeal stenting for 3 to 6 months (six successes, one death), 3 had supraglottic resection and anastomosis (three successes), 12 patients with glottic opening difficulties and short laryngeal stenosis underwent a laryngeal enlargement over a T tube without resection (11 successes, one death), and 18 were subjected to a complex combination of resection and modeling with 16 successes, 2 failures, and 1 death. Final results were successful in 208 cases (96%) with seven deaths and two failures. Mild phonetic sequelae were observed after laryngeal modeling. A minimal follow-up of 1 year has shown long-term stability of most repairs.

CONCLUSIONS

Despite acceptable results, the therapeutic approach remains difficult for laryngotracheal stenoses involving the glottic and the supraglottic level as well as for those that have not responded to previous attempts at repair. In a few cases, despite a meticulous preoperative assessment, the surgical strategy can only be adopted intraoperatively. The key to surgical success is undoubtedly a careful preoperative treatment of infection and inflammation as well as a meticulous muco-mucosal approximation of healthy margins at the anastomosis.