Surgical Candidacy for Management of Laryngomalacia: A Proposed Scoring System

Deepa Shivnani; E V Raman; Mary Kurien; Gnanam Ram; Dnyanesh Amle

doi:10.1007/s12070-022-03307-7

Surgical Candidacy for Management of Laryngomalacia: A Proposed Scoring System

Indian J Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. 2023 Mar;75(1):151-158. doi: 10.1007/s12070-022-03307-7. Epub 2022 Dec 3.

Authors

Deepa Shivnani¹, E V Raman¹, Mary Kurien^{2

3}, Gnanam Ram⁴, Dnyanesh Amle⁵

Affiliations

¹ Department of Otorhinolaryngology and Head & Neck Surgery, Children's Airway & Swallowing Center, Manipal Hospital, Bangalore, Karnataka India.
² Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Pondicherry Institute of Medical Sciences, Puducherry, India.
³ Tamilnadu MGR Medical University, Tamilnadu, Chennai, India.
⁴ Paediatric Emergency Care Unit, Manipal Hospital, Bangalore, Karnataka India.
⁵ Department of Biochemistry, AIIMS, Nagpur, India.

Abstract

Introduction: Identifying surgical candidacy for the management of laryngomalacia is a challenge.

Objective: To develop a simple scoring system for surgical candidacy in laryngomalacia.

Methods: Eighteen years retrospective observational study of children with laryngomalacia (LM) clinically categorized into mild, moderate and severe LM and were analyzed for surgical candidacy.

Results: There were 113 children (age ranging from 5 days to 14 months), 44% being mild, 30% moderate and 26% severe LM. None in mild, 32% in moderate, and all in severe LM had surgical intervention. Presence of stridor on feeding or crying and isolated type 1 or type 2 LM on laryngoscopy were significant indicators for conservative treatment (p-< 0.0001). Moderate failure to thrive, retraction at rest/sleep, with low oxygen saturation while feeding/at rest were significantly higher in both moderate and severe groups with laryngoscopic evidence of combined type 1 and 2 in moderate LM (p < 00,001). Aspiration pneumonia, hospitalization, pectus and mean pulmonary arterial pressure of more than 25 mmHg with laryngoscopic findings of all three combined types were significantly higher in severe LM (p < 0.0001).A simple scoring system was then developed and it revealed that a score of 10 or more required surgical intervention.

Conclusion and clinical significance: A clinical scoring system is being reported for the first time in medical literature to identify 'the difficult to treat' subset within moderate laryngomalacia category simplifying decision making in its management for otolaryngologists and pediatricians as well as a referral criterion for pediatric otolaryngologists' services.

Keywords: Clinical scoring system; Laryngomalacia; Stridor; Surgical candidacy.

© Association of Otolaryngologists of India 2022, Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.