Anesthetic experience of a patient with tracheomegaly -A case report-

Tracheomegaly or tracheobronchomegaly is a rare syndrome that consists of marked dilatation of the trachea and the major bronchi, and this is usually due to a congenital defect of the elastic and muscle fibers of the tracheobroncheal tree. Physicians have had only limited experience with performing anesthesia in patients with this type of syndrome. This syndorme is diagnosed by roentenological investigation and this condition is frequently associated with chronic respiratory infection and partial airway obstruction. In this report, we present a case of performing tracheostomy for a patient with tracheomegaly, and this was probably secondary to mechanical ventilator therapy. The regular tracheostomy tube did not provided sufficient length to allow the cuff to lie properly in the trachea in this patient. Because of the peri-cuff air leakgae and hypercapnea after tracheostomy, we needed a longer tracheostomy tube. But we didn't have such a tube and we didn't know any other method, so we couldn't perform tracheostomy. Therefore, we introduced a method of reducing the length of the endotracheal tube to a suitable size until a longer tracheostomy tube can be obtained for those patients having tracheomegaly.