Abstract
The relationship between cigarette smoking and polypoid lesions of the vocal fold, such as vascular polyp, singer's nodule, sessile polyp and polipoid hypertrophy, was statistically studied on 1620 cases of laryngeal diseases which consulted the outpatient clinic of Kyushu University Hospital for 4 years from 1966 to 1970.
The other laryngeal diseases excluding carcinoma were employed as the control group, in which the ratio of smoking was 54% in 643 male cases and 20% in 382 female cases. In vascular polyp, 75% of 161 male cases and 17% of female cases were cigarette smokers. It indicates that polyp is more frequently found in smoker than non-smoker in male cases; however, smoking is not considered to be a true origin of the polyp, since the sexual difference cannot be existent in the cause of this disease. In singer's nodule, 15% of 53 male cases and 10% of 71 female cases were found to be a smoker. It means that smoking is scarcely related to singer's nodule. In sessile polyp and polypoid hypertrophy, 76% of 59 male cases and 61% of 46 female cases belonged to the smoker's group. Therefore, it is concluded that smoking significantly plays an important part in occurence of these diseases.
