Tracheobronchial malacia and stenosis in children in intensive care: bronchograms help to predict oucome

Background-Severe tracheobronchial malacia and stenosis are important cause s of morbidity and mortality in children in intensive care, but little is k nown about how best to diagnose these conditions or determine their prognos is. Methods-The records of all 62 children in whom one or both of these conditi ons had been diagnosed by contrast cinetracheobronchography in our intensiv e care unit in the period 1986-95 were studied. Results-Seventy four per cent of the 62 children had congenital heart disea se; none was a preterm baby with airways disease associated with prolonged ventilation. Fifteen of the children had airway stenosis without malacia; t hree died because of the stenosis,and two died from other causes. Twenty ei ght of the 47 children with malacia died; only eight children survived with out developmental or respiratory handicap. All children needing ventilation for malacia for longer than 14 consecutive days died if their bronchogram showed moderate or severe malacia of either main bronchus (15 cases), or ma lacia of any severity of both bronchi (three additional cases); all childre n needing ventilation for malacia for longer than 21 consecutive days died if their bronchogram showed malacia of any severity of the trachea or a mai n bronchus (three additional cases). These findings were strongly associate d with a fatal outcome (p<0.00005); they were present in 21 children (all o f whom died) and absent in 26 (of whom seven died, six from non-respiratory causes). They had a positive predictive value for death of 100%, but the l ower limit of the 95% confidence interval was 83.9% so up to 16"/0 of patie nts meeting the criteria might survive. Conclusion-In this series the findings on contrast cinetracheobronchography combined with the duration of ventilation provided a useful guide to the p rognosis of children with tracheobronchomalacia. The information provided b y bronchoscopy was less useful.