Smoking is a harmful habit that can jeopardize your vocal cord health and even cause throat cancer. In this blog, your ENT doctor near you will discuss the dangers of smoking and the resulting vocal cord cancer in one patient.
The patient
The patient is a 60 year old male who smoked an average of 1 pack of cigarettes per day since he was 20 years old. 6 months before he consulted with me, he had hoarseness but he did not mind this. It was only 4 months later, when he was coughing up blood and experiencing shortness of breath that he decided to see an ENT doctor.
But first, what are your vocal cords?
Your vocal cords are two flexible bands of tissue located in your larynx (voice box). They play a vital role in producing sound by vibrating and adjusting their tension as air passes through, enabling you to speak, sing, and communicate effectively. However, these vocal cords may be injured by many things, such as smoking.
How does smoking cause throat cancer?
Smoking poses a grave danger to your vocal cord health, as the toxic chemicals in tobacco smoke directly attack the delicate tissues of your vocal cords. These harmful substances trigger a chain reaction of cellular damage, making your vocal cords susceptible to the formation of cancerous growths.
How can you detect vocal cord cancer?
When you consult an ENT doctor near you, he or she will ask you questions and do a thorough examination. In this patient with hoarseness and bleeding cough, he was advised a procedure called a laryngoscopy. A laryngoscopy is done by inserting a scope (either rigid or flexible) into a patient’s throat in order to see his or her vocal cords, the pharynx, or to assess for swallowing.
In the video on the right, you will see just one of the many harmful effects of smoking: cancer of the vocal cords.
On the upper right side of the video, you will see a diagram of what the normal vocal cords look like. When you compare it to the patient’s, you will see that there is a huge fungating mass occupying the right vocal cord of the patient (seen on the left half of the screen). Besides causing hoarseness, you can see that the size of the mass is blocking the air passageway into the lungs causing shortness of breath. If this mass increases in size, it can go beyond the voicebox into the entrance into the esophagus or food passage (seen on the top of the screen) and cause difficulty in swallowing.
Stop Smoking!
To recap, this is a video-laryngoscopy of cancer in the vocal cords causing hoarseness and difficulty of breathing. If you are reading this, and you are a smoker, please do stop today. or if you know someone who smokes, please show him or her this video to encourage him to stop smoking. Laryngeal cancer is curable when detected early. However, when it is detected late in its course, it may lead to a slow and painful death.
It is best to consult an ENT doctor near you if you have symptoms of hoarseness and bleeding cough.
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