Abstract
Acute epiglottitis is an infectious disease that may progress rapidly and cause suffocation within a few hours after onset. It may be misdiagnosed as a viral infection because of relatively mild inflammation of the pharynx. We herein report the case of a 50-year-old man with a sore throat who visited the emergency room of our hospital 8h after symptom onset and soon experienced suffocation. Emergency airway management was immediately performed using Portex® Mini-Trach II®, and surgical tracheostomy was performed the following day. Thereafter, he recovered quickly. His wife was a nurse and had good knowledge of the criticality of this disease. She had initially suspected he had acute epiglottitis and brought him to the hospital. Had she not acted so quickly, he might have died suddenly. The risk of acute epiglottitis is well recognized by otorhinolaryngologists, but the concept of this disease is not widely known among medical staff, including other-specialty doctors. Therefore, doctors with other specializations may sometimes find it difficult to diagnose this disease. This case suggests that knowledge of acute epiglottitis should be shared among medical staff.
