The Clinical Observation on Reflux Laryngitis / 听力学及言语疾病杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To summarize the clinical diagnosis and treatments of 55 reflux laryngitis (RL) pa-tients, and to study the relationship between gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) and RL. Methods The pa-tients went through the following diagnostic process consisting of the collection of medical history, laryngoscopy, gastroscope, X-ray barium meal examination, vocal evaluation, therapy of anti-acid and anti-reflux. Results The laryngeal manifestations of RL mainly consisted of laryngeal discomfort or foreign body sensation (89. 1%), chronic cough (36.4 % ), hoarseness (20 % ), laryngeal pain (18. 2 %), even severe aspiration or laryngismus (10.9%) and so on. With the laryngoscopy we could see congestion in arytenoids area (67.3%), swelling or pachynsis of a mucosal fold in interarytenoid area (43.6%), edema of true or false vocal cord(40%), a little dropsy staying in piriform sinus (32.70% ), contact ulcer or granuloma on posterior extremity of a vocal cord (20 % ), artificial sulcus under vocal cords (16.4 %). RL patients might have mild voice disorder, among whom 65.5 percent displayed ten-sion dysphonia. Fundamental frequency (F0), jitter, shimmer and normalized noise energy (NNE) of RL patients increased. Compared with the controls, there were significant differences (P<0. 05) except for the F0 of female pa-tients. The manifestation and physical symptoms were improved or disappeared after the treatment with proton pump inhibitor (PPI). Conclusion RL is one of the important manifestations of GERD out of digestive tract. Typi-cal RL manifestation is mainly a pathological process in the postero-glottis. Clinically, PPI can be used as not only a treatment but also a tentative diagnosis of RL.