Breathing or Voice... You Can Only Have One...

Sounds like a choice taken out of a morbid horror movie... "You can ONLY have one... Your voice or your breath..." The victim than loses one or the other after making a choice getting either the tongue or head cut off with a knife. But patients with vocal cord paralysis on both sides are essentially faced with this very question. Normally, the vocal cords (TVC in picture below) found in the voicebox move to accommodate talking or breathing. When the vocal cords are a…

11/04/2012 0

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Creative Ways to Wear a Scarf for Patients with a Trach or Ugly Neck Scar

[Watch the video below!!!] Given I operate on the neck not uncommonly... a common fear for a patient is how the incision will look afterwards. For a simple neck mass excision, the incision almost always heals just fine to the point nobody will notice the scar. However, this concern is multiplied a hundred-fold when a patient undergoes a tracheostomy (hole in neck) for severe obstructive sleep apnea or for some other airway reason. It could even be a laryngectomy where the entire voi…

7/07/2012 1

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Posterior Tongue Tie

An ordinary garden-variety tongue tie  (also known as ankyloglossia) is an uncommon condition whereby the tongue is anchored to the floor of the mouth preventing the tongue tip from moving freely. Patients with tongue tie have greater difficulty with: feeding if infant speech if school-age child french kissing if young adult (more info on adult tongue ties here ) Treatment is tongue tie release which can be done at any time if difficulties arise. In infants and young adults , this …

10/06/2011 0

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R&B Singer R. Kelly Undergoes Peritonsillar Abscess Drainage

Reuters on July 20, 2011 reported that R&B singer R. Kelly suffered from a peritonsillar abscess that required emergency drainage. Peritonsillar abscess is when a pus collection develops within the tonsil causing it to swell. This may occur over a period of 24 hours resulting in a severe sore throat and trouble swallowing. This condition is in contrast to tonsillitis which is when the tonsil itself is infected, but no pus collection is present. On exam, the affected tonsil may be …

7/20/2011 0

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