Background and Objective

Upper airway lesions can be lethal in burned patients if they are not early diagnosed, being a factor that modifies the prognosis for the plastic surgeon and the health team in the initial management of the burned patient.

Our aim is to incorporate the use of smartphones as a tool for image generation in emergency nasolaryngofibroscopies in burned patients with suspected upper inhalation injury and compare it with the images obtained with conventional nasolaryngofibroscopes.

Methods

Experimental, comparative, descriptive and longitudinal study, on 24 burned patients with suspicion of upper inhalation injury evaluated who were attended at the Plastic Surgery emergency of the Hospital Dr. Miguel Pérez Carreño, Caracas, Venezuela, from August 2017 to February 2018.

Results

No statistically significant difference was detected among the variables evaluated between the nasolaryngofibroscopy with smartphone versus the nasolaryngofibroscopy with conventional endoscopic tower in none of the patients for the evaluated parameters: brightness-illumination, contrast-borders, color identification basic, tone identification, video quality and sufficiency for diagnosis or discarding of upper airway inhalation injury.

Conclusions

In our experience, portable nasolaryngofibroscopy with the use of smartphones is an effective, rapid, practical, reproducible and cost-effective technique for the diagnosis of upper airway inhalation injury.

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