Trauma & Critical Care

Biography

Biography: Andreas Fette

Abstract

Lesions of the pediatric airway are considered to be rare but always serious and challenging injuries. In many cases, they are nearly invisible or hidden behind other more sinister and more obvious trauma conditions. In other cases, the child seems to be pretty stable, before it suddenly shows rapid, unexpected and sometimes even fatal deterioration. Sometimes the trauma (and its sequelae) to the airway is clearly visible, but in due course the resulting impact is less problematic and the recovery is unspectacular. Regardless if seen first by a junior or senior doctor, the trauma to the airway is overlooked on scene in a number of cases and the child therefore is not transferred directly to the (urgently needed) specialist care. There are extremely various mechanisms of accident and etiologies of airway trauma making recognition of the leading clinical signs and key symptoms especially in children nearly impossible. But significant compromise of the child`s airway has to be considered anytime and our resulting emergency management is of key importance either to save the patient`s life or at least to prevent life-long sequelae. In this communication, we would like to share our experience and management strategies out of our case series to stimulate a discussion about how to deal with these rare but complex emergency medical situations.