Important Dates
14 March, 2014
Early Registration Deadline (XXII PVC East)
11-13 April, 2014
PVC East Conference in Krakow
30 April, 2014
Full Paper Submission Deadline for chosen abstracts accepted as full papers
Krzysztof Izdebski and Rob Mickel (USA)
Voice restoration in total esophageal stenosis post total laryngectomy and radiation therapy. A case for Tokyo larynx
When surgery and radiation treatment compromise the upper esophagus in a post- totally laryngectomized patient, such a patient is deprived oral nutrition intake and can not receive tracheoesophageal puncture to restore phonation with an indwelling voice prosthesis. Injection speech cannot be acquired as well A hard and woody neck surface precludes the use of a surface electrolarynx. One option is to use intraoral Cooper-Rand style electrolarynx, but typically this device produces speech of extremely low intelligibility. To provide excellent speech based on ventilatory and speech coded respiratory timing, we used “Tokyo-Larynx”, an ingenious device which uses pulmonary air to drive a rubberband-based buzz generator. The resultant sound is directed in the retro-grade fashion, yet directly into the oral cavity. We show how this simple device produced nearly normal sounding speech in a case with severe post radiation esophageal stenosis.