Should surgeons routinely inform patients about risks of taste dysfunction after tongue base surgery for sleep apnea?

BACKGROUND Multilevel pharyngeal surgery is routinely indicated for patients suffering from obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) as both a first-line treatment and for patients whose disease is refractory to continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) treatment. Tongue-base reduction surgeries to correct relative macroglasia are rapidly gaining traction as useful treatments for OSA. Novel techniques and technologies such as radio frequency ablation, coblation lingual tonsillectomy, and transoral robotic surgery (TORS)—as well as more traditional tongue-base reduction techniques—are being employed in the operating room to achieve tongue reduction. When offering surgery to a patient, the informed consent process is key in helping the patient understand the risks of the procedure. With regard to surgery of the tongue base of OSA, most consent discussions revolve around risks of bleeding or airway swelling. Because surgery is typically directed to the posterior tongue base and not the anterior tongue, taste dysfunction (TD) typically has not been emphasized in the literature. However, it remains an understandable concern of patients undergoing tongue reduction surgery, and thus physicians should be able to knowledgeably inform patients about this complication.