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Thomas J. Kenny, MD; Jay Werkhaven, MD; James L. Netterville, MD

Arch Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. 2000;126:536-539.

Sarcoidosis is a chronic granulomatous disease of unknown pathogenesis. Reports of sarcoidosis are much less common in the pediatric literature than in the adult literature. The disease is usually systemic; rarely, however, single organs are affected. Isolated laryngeal involvement is an unusual presentation. We report a well-documented case of isolated laryngeal sarcoidosis in a 14-year-old white boy who presented to our institution with a 6-month history of dysphonia, dyspnea on exertion, and extremely sonorous snoring at night owing to his supraglottic airway disease. To our knowledge, this is only the second case of isolated laryngeal sarcoidosis reported in the pediatric literature. We review the literature and discuss the differential diagnosis, diagnostic evaluation, and treatment with carbon dioxide laser epiglottectomy and intralesional glucocorticoid deposition, which resulted in marked resolution of our patient's symptoms.

From the Department of Otolaryngology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn.