• covid19
• dysphagia
• dysphonia
• laryngotracheal sequelae
• prolonged invasive ventilation

The new Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, may require admission to an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) for massive interstitial pneumonia for up to 12% of all patients who contract the infection, with possible orotracheal intubation and subsequent tracheostomy to allow adequate invasive mechanical ventilation. The most common airway-related complications of such ICU maneuvers are laryngotracheal granulomas, scar webs, stenosis, tracheomalacia and, less commonly, tracheal necrosis with tracheo-esophageal or tracheo-arterial fistulas.
According to the current literature, it is clear today that patients subjected to prolonged intubation for COVID-19 interstitial pneumonia may have an higher incidence of tracheal complications during hospitalization or in the early post-treatment period than a control population. These patients may also have an higher incidence of long-term laryngotracheal sequelae. In fact, it is already well known in the literature that patients undergoing prolonged intubation (> 8 days) have an higher risk of developing both acute and late laryngotracheal complications. For these reasons, the main objective of this study is to evaluate the incidence and the different patterns of laryngotracheal sequelae in a COVID-19 group of patients subjected to prolonged invasive ventilation and to compare these aspects with non-COVID-19 matched controls. Secondly, we administered two specific questionnaires to assess dysphonia and dysphagia in both groups.