Foley's catheter in management of subglottic and tracheal injuries

ABSTRACT

In patients of Sub glottis and tracheal stenosis adequate lumen is achieved by endoscopic diathermization or open surgical techniques. However it is difficult to maintain patency of the created lumen due to formation of granulation and fibrous tissues. Many prosthetic devices like Laryngeal stents, Montgomery T tubes are available which are inserted and fixed after attaining an adequate lumen during a surgical procedure. Purpose of this study was to design a cheap and easily available prosthetic device for such patients. It is a descriptive case series study of ten cases. A specially tailored stent of silicone lined Foley's catheter, which is freely available and economically priced was used for Subglottic and Tracheal stenosis. Good air way was achieved after one year with no decanulation difficulty in 9 cases [90%] with an unsatisfactory result [10%]. After removing the folly's catheter Tracheostomy tube was corked for one month to observe the patency of newly formed airway in the Subglottic and upper tracheal region. When no difficulty in air way was observed it was finally taken out and the Tracheostomy was allowed to close by itself. Silicone lined specially tailored stent of Foley's catheter is a good cheap alternate addition in prosthetic devices for restoration lumen in Subglottic and Tracheal stenosis