The voice rehabilitation for laryngectomees is very important to solve their psychosocial problems. But it is difficult to get a new voice inspite of various modalities for voice rehabilitation. The authors had carried out a clinical analysis on voice rehabiliation experiences among 37 laryngectomees in our institute and Korean speech and hearing rehabilitation center during recent 5 years and obtained following results ; 1) The esophageal speech was successful in 37.8% of the cases, more effective among the cases in which the cricopharyngeus muscles were not sutured and the shortest length of the residual mucosa was more than 6cm at the time of laryngectomy and the most common cause of failure was psycogenic factor such as lack of motivation. 2) Among 23 cases of esophageal speech failure, 7 cases were undertaken tracheoesophageal puncture, however, the successful results were obtained only in 3 cases. 3) The electric larynges were useful only in 6 among 16 cases and others were poorly communicated by buccal or pharyngeal speech. This study shows that voice rehabilitation of laryngectomees with esophageal speech is still difficult but it could be improved by preserving sufficient pharyngeal mucosa and disclosing cricopharyngeus muscle at the time of laryngectomy. If the esophageal speech is failed, an immediate secondary modality of voice rehabilitation should be recommended, but further studies will be necessary for a single perfect method.
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