"Porcine bronchus" diagnosed in neonatal period

Forty days old infant with Pig Bronchus, presenting with recurrent pneumonia: A Case Report

Background

Pig bronchus is rare and usually asymptomatic, but it may also cause significant respiratory symptoms such as recurrent pneumonia, chronic bronchitis, atelectasis, and difficult airway management in surgical and critical care patients. This study is aimed to examine a case of pig bronchus in which the patient presented with recurrent pneumonia in her early days of life.

Case Report

A case report is the study design utilized in this assessment of a 40-days-old girl from a consanguineous marriage, who presented with cough and difficulty breathing for approximately a month. She was referred from a provincial hospital with no improvement in respiratory symptoms after three times hospitalization since birth. Radiological investigation revealed pig bronchus as the cause of recurrent pneumonia.

Conclusion

Pig bronchi, if not diagnosed on time, may result in severe lung infection that can even result in fatal disease. A high level of clinical suspicion is required to initiate an appropriate diagnostic workup. The gold standard modality for the diagnosis of pig bronchus is computed tomography (CT), ideally with multi-detector three-dimensional (3D) image reconstruction.

Tracheal bronchus: a rare cause of recurrent pneumonia in adults

Tracheal bronchus, also known as bronchus suis, is a rare congenital anomaly of the airway where an accessory bronchus originates directly from the trachea. With an estimated incidence of 0.001%–2.0%, this condition is rarely reported in literature. It is usually discovered as an incidental finding in an otherwise asymptomatic individual. However, it can act as a focus of recurrent infection or present as persistent radiographic infiltrates. Multidetector CT imaging and bronchoscopy play a crucial role in the identification of this entity. We hereby report the case of a middle-aged man who presented with recurrent right upper lobe pneumonia, which was found to be due to an underlying tracheal bronchus.