Laser surgery brings good news to patients with vocal cord cancer

Endoscopic laser surgery can be used to accurately remove the tumor in the early stage of vocal cord cancer, and restore the voice to a good state after surgery. The surgical efficacy rate is over 85% to 90%. It is currently the preferred method for treating vocal cord cancer and brings good news to vocal cord cancer patients.

In 1972, Vaughan et al. used CO2 laser to treat laryngeal cancer. At the same time, Polonyi, Jako, Strong et al. used CO2 laser for laryngeal microsurgery to treat supraglottic laryngeal cancer. Laser microsurgery for early vocal cord cancer has become a routine operation. Although my country successfully developed laser equipment earlier, it was used later in laryngology for laryngeal microsurgery and is not popular enough.

In my country, the application of laser surgery to treat laryngeal cancer is mainly limited to early glottic cancer T1 lesions, and few people perform laser surgery on T2 and T3 lesions. There is no unified standard for the indications of laser surgery. With the continuous development of medical technology, the indications of surgery are also expanding. In 1996, 32 cases of vocal cord cancer were treated with CO2 laser. The local recurrence rate was 9.3% after 1 to 3 years of follow-up. In 2002, 217 cases of glottic laryngeal cancer were reported, including 22 cases of carcinoma in situ. The 3-year survival rate was 97.2%, and the 5-year survival rate was 89.4%.

Compared with other traditional treatment methods, laser surgery has the advantages of short operation time, less intraoperative bleeding, clear surgical field, no need for neck incision, etc. It can also reduce the patient's pain, accelerate wound healing, reduce postoperative complications, shorten hospital stay, and maintain good postoperative laryngeal function. Moreover, laser surgery can be repeated for recurrent tumors or for the occurrence of a second primary tumor, and it is still effective.

Tips: Contraindications of laser surgery for laryngeal cancer

1. Patients with laryngeal cartilage involvement;

2. Glottic laryngeal cancer extends to more than 5mm below the glottis or involves the paraglottic space;

3. Supraglottic laryngeal cancer involving the epiglottic vallecula, pre-epiglottic space or tongue root.