Led by esophageal and airway expert Jason Smithers, M.D., the Esophageal and Airway Treatment (EAT) Program team at Johns Hopkins All Children’s in St. Petersburg, Florida, cares for infants, children and young adults with complex esophageal and airway problems.
Our team believes every patient should have more than 80 years of good esophageal and airway function and live as normal a life as possible. Our goal is to help each child grow and thrive with the best possible function, independence, and quality of life, while minimizing the need for ongoing medical support.
What Makes Us Different
World-Class Expertise
We are leaders in airway reconstruction and treat a high volume of patients for a range of esophageal, airway and thoracic conditions, including the most complex cases. Our team includes our pediatric thoracic surgeons who have deep experience in the surgical treatment of rare, complex esophageal, airway and thoracic conditions, pediatric anesthesiologists who are experienced in meeting the unique anesthesia needs of children needing surgery for airway conditions, pediatric gastroenterology specialists to address esophageal and swallowing function in our patients, and highly skilled nurses. The hospital’s radiology specialists and nutrition teams provide additional expertise in caring for our patients. Learn more about our team.
Leading-Edge Care
Our team members have developed the majority of the operations that are now used to treat complex esophageal and airway conditions, including esophageal growth strategies and techniques for tracheal support and reconstruction. We are also experienced in correcting airway compression associated with vascular rings and other conditions, with expertise in recognizing the complex pathologies involved. We pioneered and perform nerve monitoring in all cases involving the neck and chest to minimize the risk of nerve injury, particularly to the recurrent laryngeal nerves.
Global Impact
As part of our focus on providing expert, specialized care for children with esophageal, airway and thoracic conditions, we are also helping to advance care for children with these conditions around the world and share our expertise by teaching and operating with hospitals across the United States and internationally in Europe, Central and South America, and the Middle East.
Esophageal and Airway Conditions We Treat
- Bronchomalacia,
- Esophageal atresia, including “long gaps”
- Esophageal injury, including caustic ingestion and battery injury
- Esophageal replacement
- Esophageal strictures and dilated esophagus
- Hiatal hernia
- Laryngeal cleft and laryngo-tracheal esophageal cleft
- Tracheomalacia and other airway anomalies
- Tracheobronchomalacia
- Tracheal diverticulum
- Tracheoesophageal fistula (TEF), including recurrent TEF
- Vascular rings causing tracheal or esophageal compression
- Esophageal complications and injury
- Airway complications and injury
Our team is specially trained in both open and minimally invasive procedures, including:
- Airway stents and splints, internal and external
- Aortopexy, anterior and posterior
- Bronchoscopy
- Foker process for “long gap” esophageal atresia
- Jejunal interposition
- Tracheopexy, direct anterior and posterior
- Trachea strictures and rings
- Repair of laryngeal clefts, and laryngotracheal esophageal clefts
- Subglottic stenosis
- Vocal cord paralysis
- Vocal cord nerve injury
Research
Research is central to our program’s mission to improve outcomes for children with complex esophageal, airway and thoracic conditions. Through a robust clinical outcomes database, national registry development, and multicenter collaborations, our research efforts are aimed at improving diagnosis, refining surgical techniques, and expanding treatment options for patients with the most challenging conditions.
Learn more about some of our research efforts:
- We are helping to develop a national database registry to track and standardize outcomes across the United States.
- Our program is part of a consortium of esophageal referral programs studying the use of magnet-based esophageal growth and anastomosis for cases involving long gap esophageal atresia and severe esophageal strictures.
- We are continually developing innovative treatments for esophageal and airway conditions. This includes developing and assessing the Tapering Membrane Reduction Tracheobronchoplasty (TMRT) to treat severe tracheobronchomalacia as part of a multicenter study, work to develop external splint devices to support the trachea in patients with severe tracheobronchomalacia, new techniques for recurrent nerve reconstruction, innovative minimally invasive techniques to treat vascular rings, and subglottic stenosis reconstruction techniques.
- We are involved in a clinical trial evaluating when tracheostomy can be safely avoided in infants with bronchopulmonary dysplasia and tracheomalacia.
- We are working with other institutions on research related to esophageal replacement, reconstruction to treat injury from caustic ingestion, and treatment for cystic fibrosis patients who have tracheomalacia.
- We are working to teach other providers how to better diagnose tracheobronchomalacia, which is frequently mistaken for asthma or recurrent croup.
- We are developing an AI-enabled dashboard to analyze patient outcomes, with the goal of identifying patterns and improving data interpretation in real time.