Singer John Mayer Diagnosed with Vocal Cord Granuloma

On Sept 19, 2011, media reported that singer John Mayer has been forced to cancel all upcoming concert plans and delay release of a new album due to a voicebox growth.

This growth was described as a "granuloma."

What exactly is a granuloma?

It is a benign mass commonly due to repetitive mild vocal trauma resulting in exuberant growth of a specific region of the voicebox lining.

To be more precise, rather than the vocal cord itself, granulomas are most commonly found on the vocal process which is the "hinge" that allows for vocal cord movement. It is located in the back area of the voicebox.

An imprecise analogy of what a granuloma is would be a keloid of the skin.

Symptoms include mild (if any) hoarseness, mild intermittent pain on the side of the voicebox where the granuloma is located with talking/singing, rarely coughing up blood, and if large, shortness of breath.

Just like keloids of the skin, surgical removal alone is almost certainly going to fail with recurrence of the granuloma within weeks to months. All repetitive trauma to the area must be addressed to minimize risk of recurrence which is why restricted voice use must be pursued for several months (no loud talking/singing, talking ONLY when you must). Voice therapy helps to "teach" a person how to talk when they talk without causing further injury to the area. As such, botox injection to the vocal cord has been found helpful to semi-paralyze the vocal cords from coming together (chemically induced vocal cord paralysis). Reflux medications are necessary even if a patient has no symptoms as ANY acid exposure to the area is just as bad a trauma due to yelling.

Steroid injections are helpful to minimize the underlying exuberant inflammatory reaction that leads to granuloma recurrence and may need to be performed several times for effect.

To summarize, the steps followed when a granuloma-like mass is discovered on exam is as follows:

1) Trial restricted voice use and reflux medications. Voice therapy also strongly recommended.
2) If no improvement after a period of time, surgical excision to ensure it truly is a granuloma and not cancer or some other pathology
3) Follow-up with steroid injections to the granuloma site. Watch video below.
4) Botox injection can be considered which chemically prevents complete vocal cord adduction preventing the repetitive trauma to the granuloma site.

Read a Rolling Stone report here.

Read more about voicebox granulomas.