Congenital lobar emphysema presenting as an airway foreign body

Surgery versus conservative management in congenital lobar emphysema: follow up and indicators for surgery

INTRODUCTION

Congenital lobar emphysema (CLE), a rare developmental lung malformation, involves the hyperaeration of one or more lung lobes caused by partial obstruction and occurs at a rate of 1/20,000-30,000 live births. Here, we aimed to retrospectively examine the clinical, radiological, and bronchoscopy findings of patients with CLE who were diagnosed and treated by surgical or non-surgical (conservative) approaches at our center and compared our results with those in the literature.

METHODS

We examined the clinical, radiological, and bronchoscopy findings of 20 patients with CLE aged 0-18 years at our center between 2013 and 2020. In addition, we examined the symptoms and findings recorded during the patients' follow-up in this retrospective descriptive study.

RESULTS

The median age of 20 patients with CLE at diagnosis was 3.2 years (range 1 day-17 years). Respiratory distress and mediastinal shift were more prominent in patients who underwent surgery, and they were diagnosed at an earlier age compared with patients who were followed up conservatively (p = 0.001, 0.049, 0.001, respectively). Neither the pulmonary lobe involvement nor the bronchoscopy findings were found to be indicative of surgery.

DISCUSSION

We observed that respiratory distress and mediastinal shift were more prominent in patients with a diagnosis of CLE who underwent surgery compared with patients who were conservatively followed up. Moreover, we observed that those who underwent surgery were diagnosed with CLE at an earlier age. In line with the literature, the pulmonary symptoms and CLE-related imaging findings in our study were reduced during conservative follow-up.

Congenital lobar emphysema. A rare cause of hypertension

Congenital lobar emphysema is a rare disease, which is characterized by pulmoner hyperinflation. Depending on the degree of bronchial obstruction, the clinical presentation may be variable. We report a rare case with congenital lobar emphysema in a 38-days-old male infant who presented with severe respiratory distress and hypertension. Air trapping in the left upper lung and significant mediastinal shift to the right were observed on the chest x-ray. Emphysematous changes were detected on the thorax computed tomography and considered as congenital lobar emphysema. The upper left lobectomy was successfully performed by pediatric surgeons. On postoperative follow up, no sign of respiratory distress occurred and the patient was normotensive. In this report, a case with congenital lobar emphysema, which is a rare cause of respiratory distress and hypertension is discussed.