Microlaryngoscopy (Vocal Cord Surgery and Biopsy)

Your voice has been hoarse for a month, and it isn't a cold. Perhaps you teach, sing or spend the day on calls. Perhaps you smoke, or there's a cough that won't go, or a feeling of something stuck in your throat. Hoarseness that lasts more than 3 weeks always deserves a proper look at the vocal cords, especially in a smoker.

That first look usually happens in the clinic, with a thin scope passed through the nose or mouth. If it shows a growth, or the view isn't clear enough, microlaryngoscopy is the next step. Under general anaesthesia, the surgeon passes a straight, hollow metal tube called a laryngoscope through your mouth to the voice box and examines the vocal cords through an operating microscope at high magnification. Fine instruments passed down the tube can remove nodules, polyps and cysts, or take a small sample (biopsy) of anything suspicious. There's no cut on the neck.

For harmless lumps, removal usually brings a clearer voice over a few weeks, as long as the habits that caused them change too. Voice therapy often matters as much as the operation. When a biopsy is taken, the goal is an answer: whether a patch is harmless, pre-cancerous or cancer, and what treatment it needs.

Our ENT department evaluates hoarseness and vocal cord problems with laryngoscopy and video endoscopy, and treats them with anything from voice rest and therapy to surgery when needed. Throat tumours are assessed here and managed surgically where that's the right course.

Microlaryngoscopy is used both to diagnose and to treat. Your ENT surgeon suggests it after a clinic examination has found something that needs a closer look, a sample or removal.

The vocal cords heal like any wound. Talking and throat clearing rub the healing surfaces together, so resting your voice properly in the first two weeks helps the cords heal smoothly.