ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Pediatr.
Sec. Pediatric Otolaryngology
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fped.2025.1499656
This article is part of the Research TopicNon-Invasive Imaging Techniques In Children: Clinical Applications and AdvancesView all 3 articles
Diagnosis of infantile subglottic hemangioma: A 10-year experience of 25 cases
Provisionally accepted
- 1Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, Shanghai Municipality, China
- 2Shanghai Children's Hospital, Shanghai, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Objectives: To explore the clinical appearances of infantile subglottic hemangioma (SGH), and the diagnostic value of flexible fiberoptic laryngoscopy (FFL) combined with contrast-enhanced CT (CECT). Methods: The data of 25 children diagnosed with SGH from January 2012 to January 2022 were retrospectively analyzed. Results: FFL showed a smooth, rounded, vascular-appearing submucosal lesion in subglottic wall, while CECT revealed an enhancing lesion, obscuring the airway lumen. Among the 25 cases (8 males and 17 females; 10 left-sided, 11 right-sided and 4 middle), the clinical appearances contained stridor (25), respiratory distress (13), three-concave sign (10), barking cough (9), feeding difficulty (8), cyanosis (2) and hoarseness (2). SGH with cutaneous hemangiomas accounted for 24% (6/25). The age at presentation ranged from 1 day to 8 months (median, 33 days), including 96% (24/25) cases less than 6 months old. 92% (23/25) cases had a history of misdiagnosis, 22 respiratory infections, 5 laryngomalacia, 1 laryngeal cyst and 1 asthma, individually or in combination. Except 1 case died of polygenic abnormality and 1 case lost follow-up, the remaining 23 cases were cured after oral propranolol. Conclusions: For an infant with respiratory symptoms, who has repeated condition or poor effect after routine treatment, SGH should be considered, especially in those under 6 months old. FFL combined with CECT is recommended to make a definite diagnosis of SGH.
Keywords: Subglottic hemangioma, Flexible fiberoptic laryngoscopy, Contrastenhanced computed tomography, Infant, diagnosis
Received: 21 Sep 2024; Accepted: 07 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Chen, Xu, Chen, Li and Sun. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Xiaoyan Li, Shanghai Children's Hospital, Shanghai, China
Guangbin Sun, Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, Shanghai Municipality, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.