Successful perioperative airway management in a patient with angiomatous macroglossia for laser ablation under general anesthesia
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Anesthesiology and Pain Management, Emergency and Critical Care, Otorhinolaryngology
- Keywords
- macroglossia, general anesthesia, airway management, laser ablation
- Copyright
- © 2013 Hirota
- Licence
- 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.
- Cite this article
- 2013. Successful perioperative airway management in a patient with angiomatous macroglossia for laser ablation under general anesthesia. PeerJ PrePrints 1:e99v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.99v1
Abstract
Macroglossia is defined as an abnormal enlargement of the tongue that predominantly affects pediatric patients and is not frequent in adult patients. Hypothyroidism and hyperpituitarism may cause macroglossia in adults. In addition, infiltration of the tongue by abnormal tissues, including angiomatous and lymphatic malformations and amyloidosis, is a major cause of macroglossia, particularly in adults. Here we describe the case of a 63-year-old male patient with massive macroglossia due to tongue hemangioma who underwent laser ablation under general anesthesia. Elaborate preanesthetic anatomical and functional airway evaluation facilitated successful airway management in this patient, even in the presence of massive macroglossia.
Author Comment
A part of the manuscript was published as a Letter to the Editor in the Journal of Anesthesia (DOI 10.1007/s00540-013-1616-6).