Ann Thorac Surg 1997;63:1789-1790
© 1997 The Society of Thoracic Surgeons
Invited Commentary
Invited Commentary
Douglas J. Mathisen, MD
General Thoracic Surgery, Massachusetts General Hospital, Warren #1109, 32 Fruit St, Boston, MA 02114
See also page 1786.
Certain pathologic conditions involving the airway are not amenable to primary resection and reconstruction. When reconstruction is not feasible, palliation of airway obstruction is highly desirable. Tracheostomy tubes, silicone T tubes, irradiation, and core-out techniques have been used with varying degrees of success and patient acceptance.
Internal stents as a means of palliating airway obstruction is a theoretically appealing concept. The avoidance of an appliance exiting the neck such as a tracheostomy and maintaining patency of the airway without repeated interventions as required by lasering would be highly desirable by patients with airway problems. The ideal stent therefore must possess certain qualities: it must be cost effective, easily inserted and removed, inert enough to avoid erosion into nearby structures, easy to "seat" to avoid migration, and able to prevent ingrowth of tumor or granulation tissue. In recent years we have seen progress toward the ideal stent, and the device described by Dr Yanagihara and colleagues would appear to be yet another step in that direction.
Related Article
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Tracheal Stenosis Treated With Self-Expanding Nitinol Stent
- Kazuhiro Yanagihara, Hiroshi Mizuno, Hiromi Wada, and Shigeki Hitomi
Ann. Thorac. Surg. 1997 63: 1786-1789.
[Abstract]
[Full Text]
