Abstract
Angelman syndrome is characterized by severe mental retardation, seizures, inappropriate outbursts of laughter, a puppet-like ataxic gait and dysmorphic facial features such as a small head and large lower jaw. There is potential difficulty with the airway management of patients with this syndrome, because of the severe mental retardation, the small head and large lower jaw, hypotonia and large tongue. We report here a case of anesthetic management for a 4-year-old boy with Angelman syndrome. He was scheduled for a tonsillectomy and adenotomy under general anesthesia for sleep apnea syndrome. Preanesthetic medication and a muscle relaxant were not administered, because he had sleep apnea and hypotonia. Anesthesia was slowly induced with sevoflurane in oxygen and maintained with sevoflurane in nitrous oxide and oxygen. There were no difficulties with the intratracheal intubation, and the anesthesia was completed uneventfully.
