Abstract
Reactive airway disease is a prevalent condition that can be detected in the early
infancy period. The condition might also deteriorate into asthma in some cases. If
infants do not respond to the treatment of persistent wheeze and coughing, other rare
causes should be investigated. The complete form of vascular ring is an extremely
uncommon congenital cardiovascular abnormality. Double aortic arch constitutes the
most significant portion of the complete vascular ring anomalies. Clinical manifestations
of the anomaly are mainly respiratory due to the tracheal compression and mimicking
the conditions of asthma. There have not been many reports about the clinical presentations
of double aortic arch being remarkably similar to the same clinical manifestations
of asthma in the literature. As far as we can be sure, there have not been any reported
cases about severe reactive airway disease that caused a patient to have a life-threatening
condition in the pediatric intensive care unit. Herein, we present a 5-month-old girl
who had double aortic arch. Her anatomical aberration was diagnosed by three-dimensional
computed tomography angiography of thorax, and the anomaly mimicked the clinical characteristics
of life-threatening severe reactive airway disease.
Keywords
double aortic arch - reactive airway disease - respiratory insufficiency - childhood
