Laryngomalacia is the most common congenital airway abnormality in young infants and children. It presents clinically as a spectrum that in most cases is self-limiting, with symptoms resolving without treatment by around 12 months of age. In a minority of cases serious complications can arise, necessitating further management, and 10 – 15 per cent of all patients with laryngomalacia require surgical treatment in the form of a supraglottoplasty. The decision to proceed to surgery is based on the clinical assessment of the severity of the underlying laryngomalacia. Previous retrospective cohort studies highlighted the need to gather prospective data and develop tools to guide clinical decision making, allowing appropriate selection of treatment modalities for moderate to severe laryngomalacia.
PLATYPUS, a collaboration between anaesthetists and ENT surgeons is a single centre prospective observational pilot study at Perth Children’s Hospital. The aim is to determine to what extent continuous measures of oxygenation and ventilation are feasible in this cohort, and how pre-operative oxygenation and ventilation data may be useful in guiding clinicians towards selecting surgical interventions that are most likely to be successful. Continuous assessment of a supraglottoplasty candidate’s pre-operative oxygenation and ventilation might provide a useful predictive model for surgical success or failure.
Associate Prof Neil Hauser, Professor Shyan Vijayasekaran, Dr Phil Sale, Perth Children’s Hospital, Western Australia.
The project was awarded A$70,000 funding through the ANZCA research grants program for 2025.