Vocal fold microsurgery in singers.

Abstract

Some singers with benign vocal fold mucosal lesions remain unacceptably impaired vocally in spite of compliance with a regimen of medical treatment and voice therapy lasting several months-or even years. I present here my experience with 62 singers who, because of this predicament, chose to undergo vocal fold microsurgery. This series is the second largest reported to date in English literature. Procedures are presented which were used for patient selection, education, and vocal retraining, as well as for surgery itself and postoperative care. Results reported here include (a) comparison of my auditory-perceptual ratings of singing voice impairment before and after surgery, (b) preoperative versus postoperative videostroboscopic findings, (c) postoperative rate of return to public singing, and (d) postoperative patient questionaires which sought to uncover patient/singer perceptions of the results of vocal fold surgery. Excellent results were achieved overall with a very low incidence of untoward results, and no complications were encountered.