Laryngoscopy and rigid bronchoscopy represent a necessary tool in the otolaryngologist's arsenal. The advancement in designing smaller and more versatile laryngeal equipment and fiber-optic telescopes as well as the increasingly higher resolution of still and video imagery have allowed otolaryngologists to better diagnose and treat many airway lesions. This chapter describes the basic equipment...

Midazolam is widely used as a sedative agent to produce amnesia in patients undergoing fibre-optic bronchoscopy. However, if a patient does not receive sufficient local anaesthesia, continuous severe cough and physical movement may interrupt the procedure and reduce its safety. We therefore examined whether codeine phosphate is a useful premedication for bronchoscopy. The study design was a ran...

Flexible fibre-optic bronchoscopy and bronchoalveolar lavage have become important diagnostic tools for the evaluation and often for the treatment of infants and children with serious lung and airway problems causing respiratory insufficiency or failure. These patients are cared for in the paediatric or neonatal intensive-care units, and they usually require endotracheal intubation (or tracheos...

Correspondence TB is appropriate, particularly in high-prevalence countries. The study by Lee et al 2 performed in a high-prevalence Asian region and involving a very high number of untreated contacts demonstrates that the risk of progression is at its highest directly after Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) infection and that more than one-half of those subjects who progressed to TB did so with...

BACKGROUND Priority of all bronchoscopies has been diagnostic yield and various techniques have been introduced to improve it. Transbronchial biopsy (TBB) and transbronchial aspirates (TBA) also play an important role in improving diagnostic yield. The aim of the study was to determine the diagnostic yield of biopsies via fibre optic bronchoscopy (FOB) in 108 cases in which it was indicated. ...