DIFFICULT TRACHEAL INTUBATION IN PATIENTS WITH RETINOBLASTOMA CAUSED BY 13Q DEFICIENCY

Anesthetic management of retinoblastoma patients is unremarkable in mo st cases. Patients are most often babies and laryngoscopic procedures for intubation are usually easy. However, we recently experienced two cases with retinoblastoma with whom tracheal intubation was accomplish ed with difficulty. We report the two cases with a review of all 5-yea r records of retinoblastoma (rbl) in our institution. The cases we exp erienced recently were all patients with rbl with deletion of the long arm of thirteenth chromosome (13q-). In the 5-year review, the incide nce of the difficult intubation was significantly higher (P < 0.05) in rbl with 13q-(4/11) than in rbl without 13q- (0/147). In our experien ce macroglossia was noted for the difficulty in the intubation. We ass ume that some patients with rbl will be cases of difficult intubation even to cannot ventilate-cannot intubate level when the results of the ir chromosomal analysis show a deletion on the thirteenth chromosome.