Abstract
Background: Acute upper airway obstruction regardless of the cause can be a life- threatening emergency. Complete obstruction will lead to respiratory failure followed by cardiac arrest in minutes. In contrast, a child with partial obstruction may initially have an adequate airway, which may be followed by recurrent chest infections or attacks of stridor. Objectives: To investigate the different causes of upper airway obstruction among Sudanese. Patients and methods: This is a prospective observational hospital based study conducted in ENT Khartoum Teaching Hospital from October 2017 to October 2018. 62 patients were included in the study. Data were collected from the patients and their guardians using pre coded pretested questionnaire developed specifically for this study after consulting literature and epidemiologist. The data analyzed using SPSS software program and p value of 0.05 or less considered significant. Results: The male: female ratio is 1.48: 1.00. The mean age of patients was found to be 2 years and 9 months, with 87.1% of patients belonging to the age group 0- 5 years. The most common cause of obstruction was foreign body aspiration (19.4%) followed by bilateral choanal atresia and laryngomalacia (14.5%) for each and croup in (9.7 %). At presentation; all patients (100%) were dyspnoeic and distressed, 85.5% of them had obvious stridor while the remaining (14.5%) presented with cyanosis. Conclusion: upper airway obstruction in children affects mostly younger children less than 5 years. The most common cause is foreign body larynx aspiration. The most common presentation in this group is stridor.