Recovery of Voice after Surgical Intervention in a Patient Suffering from Acquired Aphonia: A Case Study

Abstract

Aphonia is an inability to produce voice. There are number of causes of aphonia. These causes may either lie within vocal cords or on the nerves supplying the muscles of larynx which are responsible to produce voice. Among them, main cause is trauma or compression to recurrent laryngeal nerve or external laryngeal nerve that results in disturbed muscular activity of vocal cords. This case study is about the recovery and regaining of voice of a patient after excision of hugely enlarged cervical lymph node, assuming that the lymph node might be producing a considerable compression over the recurrent laryngeal nerve.A young female patient suffering from aphonia having enlarged cervical lymph node was evaluated. After necessary investigation and careful physical examination of the patient, she was advised for surgical excision of enlarged lymph node in a hope that voice may return after decompression of recurrent laryngeal nerve. After1 week of surgical intervention, the patient had regained her voice. We completed surgical excision of enlarged cervical lymph node under local anesthesia following aseptic preoperative preparation of surgical field. The most probable reason behind acquiring the normal phonation of the patient might be decompression of recurrent laryngeal nerve by removing the hugely enlarged cervical lymph node. It might have resulted in normal vibrations of vocal cords as soon as the nerve had been decompressed. This might have resulted in normal motor nerve conduction.

Keywords: Aphonia, external laryngeal nerve, lymphadenopathy, recurrent laryngeal nerve, vocal cords

Cite this Article

Mohammad Shakeel Ansari. Recovery of Voice after Surgical Intervention in a Patient Suffering from Acquired Aphonia: A Case Study. Research & Reviews: Journal of Surgery. 2020; 9(1): 29–32p.