|
 Sleepy Hollow, NY - Anyone who has been following the presidential primaries cannot help but notice how the candidates' voices get strained and hoarse from overuse. All that shouting and speechmaking can wreak havoc on the vocal cords. However, hoarseness that lasts for more than a few days can be serious and should not be ignored, says Dr. Craig Zalvan, laryngologist and medical director of the Institute for Voice and Swallowing Disorders at Phelps Memorial Hospital.
Many of Dr. Zalvan's patients are professional singers, actors, speakers and teachers who have recurrent voice problems because of voice overuse. They typically have conditions such as dilated blood vessels in their vocal cords or small polyps. Now, because of a revolutionary kind of laser surgery called KTP laryngeal surgery, Dr. Zalvan is able to send his patients home with their most valuable asset intact.
One of the patients Dr. Zalvan has treated is 46-year-old Bill Cruse of Ossining, who does choral singing with the Pro Arte Singers in Stamford, CT and has been singing professionally for more than 20 years. Under Dr. Zalvan's care, Cruse had been trying less invasive therapies for his ongoing voice problems, but after much deliberation finally decided to try laser surgery.
"My voice is a gift that God has given me, and the thought of somebody pointing a laser at my vocal cords was very scary. For someone whose life has been about singing and sharing my voice with others, the possibility of not having that gift was extremely frightening," says Cruse.
Two weeks after the procedure, during which Dr. Zalvan removed a dilated blood vessel from Cruse's vocal cords using the KTP laser in the office under topical anesthesia, he was able to start singing again. "It would have taken me three to six months to recover if we had done this surgically, and now my voice is better than ever," says Cruse.
"Although laser surgery has been used for voice conditions for the past 40-50 years, this new type of laser has revolutionized the way we treat these conditions," says Dr. Zalvan. The Institute for Voice and Swallowing Disorders is the only center in the Hudson Valley region that has this technology.
"Older lasers would injure the covering of the vocal cords, so you would get scarring," says Dr. Zalvan. "This new laser technique lets us remove abnormal blood vessels on the voice box or vocal cords and spares cutting the skin covering. By avoiding damage and scarring, we are able to help patients preserve their vocal quality," says Dr. Zalvan. "It's the gold standard of therapy for small benign tumors (papillomas), pre-cancers and some vocal cord cancers, vascular abnormalities, polyps and other lesions."
The procedure can be performed in the doctor's office with topical anesthesia, and requires no sedation or breathing tube. The treatment, which takes from a few seconds to a few minutes, is done by numbing the throat and placing an endoscope down through the nose to view the larynx and vocal cords. The doctor then snakes the laser down the scope to treat the problem.
Afterwards, patients are assisted in regaining optimal use of their voices by speech language pathologists who have classical and musical theater backgrounds in addition to specialty training in adult voice rehabilitation.
For more information about the Institute for Voice and Swallowing Disorders at Phelps, call 914-366-3636.
Phelps Memorial Hospital Center is a 235-bed community hospital with 450 medical staff, representing 34 clinical specialties. Phelps is the exclusive Westchester satellite for Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, a clinical affiliate of Mount Sinai Hospital, and a member of the New York-Presbyterian Healthcare System. www.phelpshospital.org
 |
