A 9-year-old girl with laryngeal injury treated surgically under direct laryngoscopic guidance

follow-up after surgery within the laryngeal lumen

Abstract

We recently encountered a 9-year-old girl with a laryngeal injury caused when she struck her neck against a surfboard while swimming. Upon arrival at our facility, her vocal cord was lacerated, which resulted in adhesion formation between the cords at the centers of both the right and left vocal cords. We performed direct laryngoscopy to free the adhesions, followed by suturing of the vocal cord margins and subsequent manipulations from inside the laryngeal lumen. Following the surgery, the dyspnea, which she experienced during exercise decreased over time. In addition, the coarseness of her voice lessened, thus allowing her to speak loudly enough for conversation. A satisfactory treatment of the laryngeal injury was possible in this case, without requiring an incision of the thyroid cartilage. Our experience with this case is reported herein as an example of the successful treatment of a vocal cord adhesion in a manner which is unlikely to interfere with the future development of the thyroid cartilage.