Regaining Your Voice: A New Vocal Cord Cancer Treatment

People afflicted with cancer of the vocal cords used to have to decide between two options: treatment of the cancer by invasive surgery or radiation, which often destroyed the vocal cords and ruined vocal function for the rest of their lives, or retaining the function of the vocal cords while the cancer spread to other parts of their bodies. Recently, though, a breakthrough technique is allowing people to retain both vocal function and life.

Dr. Steven Zeitels’s extensive study of the physiology of the vocal organs, culled from years of studying singers and lecturers, has led him to develop a new treatment for cancer of the vocal cords. It involves a pulsed angiolytic laser and a special camera, which Dr. Zeitels uses to carefully target the blood vessels supplying the cancerous tissue. This is in contrast to other kinds of lasers, which are used to cut away tissue but often damage healthy tissue in the process. “You're directing the light but you're only directing it under a microscope to the cancerous tissue and you don't affect the normal tissue,” says Dr. Zeitels.

The treatment has already saved some of the world’s most famous voices, including Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, Cher and Julie Andrews. Sevi Rivlin, a renowned Israeli comic, was diagnosed with vocal cord cancer in 2006. The cancer was so prevalent that one could not see the actual vocal cords underneath the layers of cancerous tissue. It was the largest tumor yet treated by Dr. Zeitels’s angiolytic laser. Two years and ten treatments later, Dr. Zeitels can “…see no evidence of cancer. The dysplasia is mostly removed.” Rivlin, Tyler, Cher, Andrews and the other 19 patients treated by the technique are now cancer-free and have excellent vocal function.

The procedure is usually done without the use of general anesthesia in about 20 minutes and requires no special facilities. Larger scientific studies are surely needed before Dr. Zeitels’s procedure becomes widespread, but thus far, it shows amazing promise, especially for those patients formerly faced with the cruel choice between saving their voices and their lives.

ABC News article:

Breakthrough Treatment Saves Vocal Cords and Lives; April 30, 2008

By Dr. Tim Johnson and Susan Wagner

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=4759329&page=1