Novel measurements of the length of the subglottic airway in infants and young children.

Background: To date, the lengths of the subglottic and tracheal airway segments have been measured from autopsy specimens. Images of the head and neck obtained from computerized tomography (CT) provide an alternate method. Our objective in this study was to identify anatomic landmarks from CT scans in infants and young children to estimate the lengths of the subglottic and tracheal airway segments and to correlate these lengths with age.