General anaesthesia for thyroplasty

A new anaesthetic technique is described for thyroplasty. Thyroplasty was p erformed to restore the voice in unilateral vocal cord paralysis. After ski n incision and dissection down to the larynx, a window was cut in the thyro id ala and a silastic wedge used to displace the vocal cord medially. The r equired size of this wedge was determined by pre-operative computerized tom ography scanning of the larynx. At this point the patient had to be awake a nd cooperative to allow repeated phonation to facilitate correct displaceme nt of the vocal cord.