Case Reports of Acquired and Reversible Tracheomegaly

Author Info

Alice Su Sara Yang Shaley Albaugh Steven J. Charous

Corresponding Author

Alice Su
Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, Maywood, Illinois, USA

A B S T R A C T

Dilation of the trachea, or tracheomegaly, is a rare phenomenon that can occur under a variety of disease processes and categorized into either congenital or acquired. In acquired cases, causes range from excessive tracheal wall pressure from prolonged intubation and cuff hyperinflation to inflammatory respiratory pathologies such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), pulmonary fibrosis, and cystic fibrosis. However, due to the low number of reported cases, the nature of these acquired processes is unclear. We present two cases that developed tracheomegaly of unknown etiology, one of which was reversible. Patients with factors predisposing them to tracheomalacia during intubation can experience significant air leaks with difficulty ventilating the patient and that could represent increasing tracheomegaly. Changing the cuff location intermittently during prolonged intubations may prevent tracheomegaly from occurring or may diminish its’ extent once it does occur. To the best of our knowledge, the reversibility of this relatively rare disorder has not been previously reported.

Article Info

Article Type

Case Report

Publication history

Received: Wed 09, Nov 2022
Accepted: Wed 30, Nov 2022
Published: Sat 17, Dec 2022

Copyright

© 2023 Alice Su. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Hosting by Science Repository.
DOI: 10.31487/j.IJSCR.2022.03.01