Transoral rigid 70‐degree laryngoscopy in a pediatric voice clinic
Julina Ongkasuwan MD  Danielle Devore CCC‐SLP  Sarah Hollas CCC‐SLP  Jennifer Yan MD
First published: 13 December 2018 https://doi.org/10.1002/lary.27706
This work was presented at the American Laryngological Association meeting at the Combined Otolaryngology Spring Meetings in National Harbor, Maryland, U.S.A., April 18–22, 2018.
The authors have no funding, financial relationships, or conflicts of interest to disclose.
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Abstract
Objective
Complaints of dysphonia and dysphagia frequently require rigid or flexible laryngoscopy in the office to aid in diagnosis. For young children, flexible laryngoscopy can be uncomfortable and often requires multiple adults to restrain the child. Rigid laryngoscopy does not result in crying but does require patient cooperation; thus, it is used primarily in adults. This project describes our experience using rigid laryngoscopy in a pediatric cohort.

Methods
This was a retrospective chart review of patients at a pediatric voice clinic who underwent laryngoscopy from December 2011 through March 2017. Data analysis is via Student t test and descriptive analysis.

Results
Three hundred and eleven patients were identified with 423 unique laryngoscopy exams. Of those, 212 of the exams were flexible and 210 were rigid. One patient did not tolerate either rigid or flexible exam. There was a statistically significant difference in age between children diagnosed via rigid mean 10.92 years (range 2.39–19.14 years) versus flexible mean 6.51 years (range 0.41–19.29 years), P ≤ 0.01. Of the 44 children under 3 years of age, flexible laryngoscopy was used almost exclusively, with 43 of 44 (97.7%) flexible scope exams. Rigid laryngoscopy was performed on 24 of 115 (20.9%) children aged 3 to 5 years, 26 of 40 (65%) aged 6 years, and 159 of 223 (71.3%) aged 7 and older.

Conclusion
Transoral 70o rigid laryngoscopy can be used in select children as young as 3 years of age. This modality allows for improved visualization of lesions with greater comfort for patients.

Laryngoscope, 129:1657–1659, 2019