Endoscopic Versus Open Surgical Intervention for Congenital Laryngeal Webs: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

To examine and compare the outcomes of various surgical interventions for congenital laryngeal webs in terms of avoidance of tracheostomy, rate of decannulation, web recurrence, revision surgery, and mortality in children.

Following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, a systematic review was conducted on December 10, 2021, using a comprehensive search in PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane library, and Embase with no date restriction.

Articles on surgical intervention for congenital laryngeal webs in pediatric (<18 years) patients were included in the analysis. Articles including acquired laryngeal webs, no surgical intervention, or exclusively adult population were excluded.

9027 articles were reviewed, 24 articles met the inclusion criteria and 126 patients were included. In patients with Grades I and II webs, there was no significant difference in rates of tracheostomy or decannulation, between endoscopic (100%) versus open approach (100%). For Grades III and IV webs, 96% of patients who received open surgery were decannulated or avoided tracheostomy compared to 84% of those managed endoscopically (p = 0.081). There were significantly lower rates of revision surgery in the open group compared to the endoscopic group (77.8% vs 30.9%, p = 0.008).

This study showed no difference in rates of tracheostomy, decannulation, web recurrence, revision, or mortality between endoscopic and open approaches for the treatment of Grades I and II webs. For Grades III and IV, open surgical techniques achieved a lower revision rate. Results should be interpreted in light of associated increased morbidity with open procedures.