TY - JOUR
TI - Assessment of voice quality after carotid endarterectomy
AU - Lazaris, AM
AU - Vasdekis, SN
AU - Gougoulakis, AG
AU - Liakakos, TD and
AU - Galanis, GD
AU - Giannakakis, SG
AU - Sechas, MN
JO - European Journal of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery
PY - 2002
VL - 24
TODO - 4
SP - 344-348
PB - W B SAUNDERS CO LTD
SN - 1078-5884, 1532-2165
TODO - 10.1053/ejvs.2002.1725
TODO - carotid endarterectomy; voice change; assessment of voice quality;
cranial nerve injury
TODO - Objectives: vocal cord paralysis is considered a rare complication of
carotid endarterectomy (CEA), but alteration in voice quality may be
more common. The aim of this prospective study was to evaluate the
effect of CEA on voice quality and to correlate any changes with the
extent of the dissection.
Design - Material - Methods: thirty-five patients who underwent CEA were
divided in two groups, according to the level of surgical dissection
performed. The high-level dissection group was comprised of those
patients that required mobilisation of hypoglossal nerve and division of
the posterior belly of digastric muscle. The low-level dissection group
included the rest. All the patients’ voices were recorded and analysed
digitally before CEA, one and three months after the operation. Voice
data were measured for standard deviation of fundamental frequency,
jitter, shimmer and normalised noise energy (NNE). All patients
underwent a laryngeal examination pre- and post-operation.
Results: none of the patients had any vocal cord dysfunction on
laryngoscopy. Significant changes of voice quality (jitter, shimmer,
NNE) were noticed in the high-level dissection group (p < 0.05) one
month after the operation: Two months later, the voice changes had
subsided, but still significant disturbances remained (jitter, shimmer).
Conclusions: voice-related disturbances are far more common following
CEA than is generally believed and, although they seem to for the most
part temporary, they deserve attention. Specifically, high-level
surgical dissection seems to be a risk factor of postoperative vocal
impairment.
ER -