Abstract
Since 1993, we have injected autologous fat into paralyzed vocal cords as an alternative to alloplastic substances for vocal cord augmentation. To determine whether our technique aids in long-term graft survival, we evaluated the long-term effects of our autologous fat injection technique.
Ten patients with unilateral laryngeal paralysis were treated by fat injection. All showed improvement in the maximum phonation time (mean time 4.9 s to 13.6 s). The vocal cords of 2 patients were evaluated by CT imaging. Low density area which suggested existence of injected fat lasted for 46 months and 55 months.
The results of this report show that autologous fat which has not been damaged during harvesting or injection can survive transplantation into the vocal cord.
