Transient Aphonia After Mediastinoscopy

Abstract

The most common adverse event after cervical mediastinoscopy is recurrent laryngeal nerve (RLN) injury, which has an incidence of 0.6% [1]. We report the case of a 68-year-old man with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who experienced transient bilateral vocal cord paralysis after mediastinoscopy, which manifested in complete aphonia. This patient's ability to maintain his airway was carefully followed up, but neither endotracheal intubation nor tracheostomy was required. The vocal cord paralysis resolved without intervention after 5 hours. To our knowledge, this is the first reported case in which bupivicaine used at the end of a cervical mediastinoscopy diffused through the freshly dissected planes to paralyze both RLNs along the tracheoesophageal grooves.

Publication Date

6-1-2017

Publication Title

Annals of Thoracic Surgery

Volume

103

Issue

6

Number of Pages

e549-e550

Document Type

Article

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.athoracsur.2017.01.027

Socpus ID

85019637117 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/85019637117

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