Anaesthetic management of a patient with severe post-burn mento-sternal and circumoral scar contractures -a challenging airway

Abstract

The anaesthetic management of patients with severe post-burn contracture presents many difficult problems ranging from scarce venous access to a difficult airway. Airway management is a challenge to anaesthesiologist owing to contractures and deformity resulting in nonalignment of oral, pharyngeal and laryngeal planes for intubations. Severe post burn neck contracture results in difficult intubation, which can be life threatening and can result in multiple serious complications and sequels. We present the successful anaesthetic management of a patient with severely limited neck extension, fixed flexion deformity and microstomia by awake nasal fibreoptic intubation.