A three-month-old child presented to our district general hospital with acute respiratory distress. He was found to have massive spontaneous pneumomediastinum and extensive surgical emphysema overlying the neck. Tracheal intubation using the GlideScope® was difficult, and the patient's trachea was ultimately intubated with a direct laryngoscope. Computed tomography revealed bilateral lung consolidation and reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction swab was positive for SARS-CoV-2. There was no other precipitating factor to explain the presence of pneumomediastinum. The patient was treated with pleural and mediastinal drains, required five days of mechanical ventilation on a paediatric intensive care unit and subsequently made a full recovery. We outline our initial differential diagnosis, airway management plan, and propose a mechanism for the development of spontaneous pneumomediastinum in this case. We suggest that clinicians should consider pneumomediastinum as a potential cause of surgical emphysema, particularly in the context of COVID-19, even in infants. To our knowledge, this is the first reported case of COVID-19 in this age group with spontaneous pneumomediastinum as the presenting feature.
Keywords: paediatrics: airway management; respiratory distress syndrome: effects (paediatrics).
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