What food can I eat after laryngeal cancer surgery

Cooking nutritious porridge, nourishing soup... These thoughtful cares may not be appreciated by laryngeal cancer patients. Because laryngeal cancer patients are prone to choking when swallowing food, especially liquid food, after surgery, the best diet is to eat dry food first, then semi-dry food, and finally liquid food.

Choking caused by swallowing is the most troublesome problem after laryngeal cancer surgery. In this regard, experts explained that after surgery, patients need to eat and drink through the laryngeal cavity into the esophagus, and the air in the lungs also needs to pass through this cavity. Although some technical treatments will be done during the operation, it is difficult to ensure that no food enters the shared cavity into the trachea and causes choking.

The best way to deal with choking is to practice swallowing. Generally speaking, patients should start practicing swallowing 15 to 20 days after surgery. At the beginning, it is best to choose dry food, such as bread, steamed buns, etc. Such food can form a solid rice ball after chewing, which is relatively "complete" and not easy to run into the trachea, which can reduce the occurrence of choking. If you can swallow bread smoothly, you can practice eating semi-dry food, such as rice, noodles, etc., and finally drink porridge, soup, water, etc.

Some patients are afraid of choking and are afraid to eat after surgery. Experts say: "The more you are afraid to eat, the more likely you are to choke. Through swallowing exercises, the occurrence of choking will gradually decrease, and finally even disappear." If you start to choke when you start to practice swallowing, you can use some small methods to assist, such as finger pressure (i.e. press the skin of the lower jaw with your fingers when swallowing) or food bolus method (i.e. eat a bite of steamed bun or banana to block the stoma before eating) and other methods for training. If it doesn't work, insert an inflatable air bag into the patient's tracheal incision, inflate it with a syringe when eating, and deflate it after eating. But you can't rely too much on these methods. In the end, patients still have to overcome choking through practice. A small number of patients cannot overcome choking through swallowing exercises and need surgery, but they may lose their language function.

Experts have also discovered an interesting phenomenon in clinical practice: some patients are less likely to choke when they change their body position when swallowing, such as bending over, while some are less likely to choke when they lean to the left, and some are less likely to choke when they lean to the right. Although it has not yet been concluded what kind of patients and what body position are less likely to choke, patients can try to change their body position when swallowing to make swallowing easier.