[Episodic laryngeal dyskinesia: a functional cause of stridor]

We present five cases of episodic laryngeal dyskinesia. This term describes an entity associating acute dyspnea with inspiratory and/or expiratory stridor, sometimes ending in acute respiratory distress. The origin of this trouble comes from paradoxal contraction of the vocal cords, which is reversible and recurrent. The clinical presentation presents as a differential diagnosis for serious disorders such as bronchial asthma, laryngeal oedema, or stenosing lesions of the upper airways. The definitive diagnosis is made by excluding organic pathology, by visualising laryngeal spasm and by the inspection of flow volume curve. A comparison of all the published papers since 1974 reveals the benign nature of this "noisy" disorder and to bring out the diagnostic criteria thus avoiding too aggressive an approach in these patients.