This creates a diagnostic pitfall in which many patients with laryngotracheal stenosis are incorrectly diagnosed as having asthma and are treated for presumed lower airway disease.

In addition, a methodology called the Cotton-Myer system is commonly used to evaluate the degree of severity of the laryngotracheal stenosis based on the percentage of obstruction; other systems have also been proposed to fill potential shortcomings of the Cotton-Myer classification and help capture the full complexity of the illness.

Late June or early July 2010, a new potential treatment was trialed at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, where Ciaran Finn-Lynch (aged 11) received a transplanted trachea which had been injected with stem cells harvested from his own bone marrow.

The use of Ciaran's stem cells was hoped to prevent his immune system from rejecting the transplant,[31] but there remain doubts about the operation's success, and several later attempts at similar surgery have been unsuccessful.

In babies and young children however, the subglottis is the narrowest part of the airway and most stenoses do in fact occur at this level.