Systematic Reviews
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Hepatol. Dec 28, 2016; 8(36): 1637-1644
Published online Dec 28, 2016. doi: 10.4254/wjh.v8.i36.1637
Isolated bilateral Tapia’s syndrome after liver transplantation: A case report and review of the literature
Itxarone Bilbao, Cristina Dopazo, Mireia Caralt, Lluis Castells, Elisabeth Pando, Amaia Gantxegi, Ramón Charco
Itxarone Bilbao, Cristina Dopazo, Mireia Caralt, Lluis Castells, Elisabeth Pando, Amaia Gantxegi, Ramón Charco, Department of Digestive Surgery, Hepatobiliopancreatic Surgery and Liver Transplant Unit, Hospital Universitario Vall d’Hebrón, CIBERehd, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, 08035 Barcelona, Spain
Author contributions: Bilbao I, Dopazo C, Caralt M and Pando E participated in the liver transplantation surgery; Bilbao I designed the research; Castells L followed the patients; Gantxegi A analyzed the data; Bilbao I and Gantxegi A wrote the paper; Charco R supervised the paper; all authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Data sharing statement: The technical appendix and dataset are available from the corresponding author at ibilbao@vhebron.net.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Itxarone Bilbao, MD, PhD, Department of Digestive Surgery, Hepatobiliopancreatic Surgery and Liver Transplant Unit, Hospital Universitario Vall d’Hebrón, CIBERehd, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Paseo Vall d’Hebrón 119-129, 08035 Barcelona, Spain. ibilbao@vhebron.net
Telephone: +34-93-2746113 Fax: +34-93-2746112
Received: August 19, 2016
Peer-review started: August 23, 2016
First decision: September 28, 2016
Revised: October 14, 2016
Accepted: November 1, 2016
Article in press: November 2, 2016
Published online: December 28, 2016
Processing time: 129 Days and 11.4 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Tapia’s syndrome is a rare entity characterized by the concomitant extracranial injury of the hypoglossal nerve (XII) and the recurrent laryngeal branch of the vagus nerve (X) at the base of the tongue and the pyriform fossa. Anesthesiologists, surgeons and otorhinolaryngologist should be aware of its presentation at any type of surgery as in the present case, after liver transplantation. The purpose of this study is to present our even rarer presentation of bilateral Tapia’s syndrome to the liver transplant community and to review the literature to update the current management and treatment. The most relevant common feature in most cases of bilateral syndrome was orotracheal intubation prolonged for more than 14 d.