Tracheo-oesophageal party wall thickness in laryngectomised patients in India: implications for surgical voice restoration.

Objective: To document accurately the tracheo-oesophageal party wall thickness (PWT) intra-operatively in patients undergoing total laryngectomy and to correlate it with constitutional parameters like height, weight, body mass index (BMI), age, and gender. Also, to correlate PWT with the length of tract (LOT), that is prosthesis size, as measured using the standard valve length measuring device provided by the manufacturers.

Methods: Twenty-eight patients of carcinoma larynx, following removal of the diseased larynx had their tracheo-oesophageal PWT measured using a special custom-designed and calibrated external (or outside) calliper and a primary trachea-oesophageal puncture (TOP) was made and inserted 10-14 days postoperative with an appropriately sized Blom-Singer(R) indwelling voice prosthesis.