What to do if a laryngeal cancer patient cannot speak after total laryngectomy

Laryngeal cancer patients worry that they will lose the ability to speak after a total laryngectomy. This worry is understandable because after a total laryngectomy, the patient's larynx is completely removed, including the vocal cords used for pronunciation. Not only that, patients after a total laryngectomy breathe through a front cervical stoma, so the patient "almost" loses the ability to speak.

The reason why it is said above that the patient "almost" loses the ability to speak is that although the patient loses the ability to pronounce with the laryngeal cavity, he can still master other pronunciation methods through certain training, such as esophageal pronunciation, tracheoesophageal pronunciation and artificial larynx. The following is a brief introduction to these three pronunciation methods.

1. Esophageal pronunciation: As the name suggests, esophageal pronunciation is the use of esophagus to make pronunciations. It has been used in clinical practice as early as the early nineteenth century. Patients can be trained to swallow air into the esophagus, so that the esophagus can store a certain amount of air. Before the gas enters the stomach, the upper part of the esophagus vibrates with the help of intrathoracic pressure and cricopharyngeal muscle contraction, forming speech, namely esophageal sound.

2. Tracheoesophageal pronunciation: Tracheoesophageal pronunciation is a more popular pronunciation method in recent years. The method is to form a tracheoesophageal or tracheo-hypopharynx gas shunt through surgery. Driven by the intrapulmonary pressure, the hypopharyngeal and upper esophageal mucosal tissues vibrate to emit a fundamental tone, which is processed into speech.

3. Artificial larynx: Artificial larynx is an artificial pronunciation device that can vibrate and produce fundamental tones, and then form speech through the speech-forming organs.