Stridor causes. Laryngomalacia: two infrequent cases

Laryngomalacia is the most common congenital laryngeal abnormality underlying stridor in infants, and usually resolves spontaneously before two years of age. However, a small percentage of cases have no such favorable evolution, so it is important to identify severe cases with clinical consequences and perform a thorough differential diagnosis. Principal signs of concern are the presence of apnea or failure to thrive. We present two cases of interest in this field, one because of severe clinical consequences at early onset and the other because of late resolution with sleeping apnea episodes lived as threatening by the family. A careful clinical anamnesis, including perinatal details and surgical history, and a complete physical examination (stridor characteristics, peculiar facial features, skin lesions) are the key to an appropriate diagnosis approach. Awake flexible nasopharyngolaryngoscopy may achieve diagnosis of most supraglotic abnormalities, even though it may fail when detecting dynamic dysfunctions appearing only in certain circumstances (e.g. asleep patient in supine position). Fibrobronchoscopy under sedation, in patients breathing spontaneously, has been proven a safe and effective tool in the differential diagnosis of stridor in childhood. Moreover, it can be used as therapeutic approach in the same procedure, by means of different techniques under deep sedation or general anesthesia depending on their complexity.