Vocal cord paralysis associated with goiter usually indicates the presence of a malignancy. Pediatric patients retain significant thymic tissue that regresses only later in life. This thymic tissue can develop significant hyperplasia during an acute autoimmune process. We describe a case of a 17-year-old girl who presented with a goiter secondary to severe Graves' disease and a 2-month history ...

Lesions to the laryngeal nerves, despite their low incidence, are the most severe long term complications after thyroidectomy.Visualization after careful dissection of the recurrent laryngeal nerve (RLN) is now the gold standard among thyroid surgeons. The Zuckerkandl tubercle (TZ) is a constant landmark for the identification of the RLN. Recent studies show the occurrence of two or more branch...

Laryngeal palsy often results from recurrent laryngeal or vagal nerve injury during oncologic surgery of the head and neck. The aim of this study was to describe the characters of spontaneous reinnervation in rats following recurrent laryngeal nerve (RLN) crush injury. Twenty-five male Sprague-Dawley rats each were subjected to a 5-mmlong crush injury to the right recurrent laryngeal nerve. Voc...

INTRODUCTION A non-recurrent variant of the inferior laryngeal nerve has been seldom reported. These reports are mostly based on cadaveric dissection studies or large chart review studies in which the emphasis is placed on the determination of the frequency of the variation, and not on the clinical appearance of this variant. We graphically describe the intraoperative identification of a non-re...

A case of a 50-year-old male who developed left recurrent laryngeal nerve palsy due to a bronchogenic cyst is presented. The bronchogenic cyst recurred following incomplete excision and multiple attempts at percutaneous aspiration. Recurrent laryngeal nerve palsy is an unusual complication of bronchogenic cysts. This case highlights the need for complete excision of these cysts and the lack of ...

UNLABELLED More than a century ago, Ortner described a case of cardiovocal syndrome wherein he attributed a case of left vocal fold immobility to compression of the recurrent laryngeal nerve by a dilated left atrium in a patient with mitral valve stenosis. Since then, the term Ortner's syndrome has come to encompass any nonmalignant, cardiac, intrathoracic process that results in embarrassment ...

OBJECTIVES/HYPOTHESIS It is well known that the recurrent laryngeal nerve not only innervates the larynx but also contains baroreceptor fibers, as demonstrated by physiological studies. Because hypertension has a negative impact on both peripheral nerve morphology and the baroreflex, we investigated the recurrent laryngeal nerve morphological alterations related to the development of hypertensi...

Ortner syndrome or cardiovocal syndrome refers to hoarseness of voice due to recurrent laryngeal nerve paralysis secondary to cardiovascular disease. We present three cases of Ortner syndrome in infants with congenital heart disease. All the three cases had moderate to severe pulmonary hypertension with moderately dilated pulmonary artery. We believe that the dilated pulmonary artery caused com...

BACKGROUND Total thyroidectomy is currently the preferred treatment for thyroid cancer, multinodular goitre and Graves disease; however, many surgeons choose not to perform total thyroidectomy to treat benign thyroid diseases owing to the associated risk of postoperative hypoparathyroidism and recurrent laryngeal nerve damage. We reviewed 932 total thyroidectomies performed for benign thyroid d...

An anastomosis between the recurrent inferior laryngeal nerve (RILN) and the cervical sympathetic ganglion is seen rarely and might be confused with non-recurrent inferior laryngeal nerve (NRILN) in patients undergoing thyroidectomy and parathyroidectomy. In spite of the fact that NRILN is rarely seen and is an important anatomical structure, when damaged, the quality of life of the patient is ...