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Case Reports
. 2023 Oct 23;15(10):e47509.
doi: 10.7759/cureus.47509. eCollection 2023 Oct.

Transient Hypoglossal and Lingual Nerve Injury Following the Use of I-gel Supraglottic Airway: A Case Report

Claudia L Sotis  1 , Hosseinali Jafari  1 , Joshua J Solano  2 , Irina Fishman  1
Affiliations
Case Reports

Transient Hypoglossal and Lingual Nerve Injury Following the Use of I-gel Supraglottic Airway: A Case Report

Claudia L Sotis et al. Cureus. .

Abstract

Injury to the hypoglossal and/or lingual nerve is a rare occurrence with the use of a laryngeal mask airway (LMA) or supraglottic airway (SGA) device. There has been one prior report of a lingual and hypoglossal nerve injury with the i-gel™ SGA. We are describing the second reported hypoglossal and lingual transient nerve injury in a male patient while using an i-gel™ SGA. Although excessive cuff pressure has been cited as a possible cause, the i-gel™ does not have a cuff. This report highlights that hypoglossal nerve injury can still occur, even with the use of a cuffless LMA such as the i-gel™ SGA.

Keywords: hypoglossal nerve palsy; i-gel airway; iatrogenic complication; laryngeal mask airway (lma); lingual nerve palsy; supraglottic airway device.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Image of an inserted supraglottic airway demonstrating how it can compress the lingual and hypoglossal nerves.
GMA: glottis mask airway Reproduced from Li et al. [12]. This article is available under the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC license and permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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