ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Voice quality may be an important issue for choosing treatment options of early glottic cancer. It has been reported that voice quality is worse after laser cordectomy compared to that of radiation therapy. But, with developed visualization tools, the precise localization of lesions became possible enabling surgeons to decide the appropriate surgical extent to preserve voice after laser cordectomy. The authors assessed the postoperative voice quality of patients who underwent laser cordectomy according to the classification by the European Laryngological Society. SUBJECTS AND METHOD: Thirty patients who were diagnosed with glottic cancer and treated with laser cordectomy between April, 1999 and January, 2006, were evaluated. All the patients were followed-up more than 6 months. Objective evaluations included maximal phonation time, fundamental frequency, jitter, shimmer, noise-to-harmonics ratio and subjective evaluation was performed by the GRBAS scale. RESULTS: The type II laser cordectomy group and some cases of the type III cordectomy showed no significant differences compared with the normal control group in both objective and subjective evaluations. CONCLUSION: This study shows that the group of laser cordectomy type II and some cases of type III had acceptable results compared to that of the normal control group. Thus, laser cordectomy could be considered as an alternative to radiation therapy in selected patients with early glottic cancer, even when preserving the quality of voice is an important issue.