Imagine if your voice was the center of your professional life, but you had to risk vocal cord damage to fight cancer.
 
Lorna Brunelle is a professional singer and coach who uses her voice every day… in a big way.

But during a recent performance, her throat didn't feel right.   
"Whenever I sang the high parts of the song, I felt like somebody was pushing a thumb into my neck," she says.

Lorna had thyroid cancer and needed surgery. 
 
"My first concern was that I'd lose my voice." 

That's because the nerves that power the voice box lie directly under the thyroid gland. Damaging them is the most common complication in thyroid surgery and happens in about one out of every 250 cases. 

"If one nerve is injured, you would typically anticipate a, a weak or breathy voice and coughing when you drink liquids. But when both nerves are injured, the problem is bilateral vocal chord paralysis," says Dr. Greg Randolph, a thyroid surgeon at Mass. Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston, MA.

Doctor Randolph uses a nerve monitoring system to help prevent injuries during surgery. It maps where the nerve pathways are, monitors them during surgery and tests for nerve injury when one side of the thyroid surgery is complete, before the surgeon operates on the other side. 
 
"Electrical testing is not a perfect test, but we know it's vastly superior to the current test which is really just a visual examination of the nerve by the surgeon. We know that that only picks up about one out of every ten nerves that are injured." 
 
The use of nerve monitoring is on the rise, but many patients are unaware of the technology and most thyroid surgeries are still performed without it.

AUDIENCE INQUIRY:
For information on thyroid cancer:
American Cancer Society, http://www.cancer.org, or contact your local chapter
National Cancer Institute, http://www.cancer.gov

For information on other thyroid conditions:
Hormone Foundation, http://www.hormone.org/Thyroid/overview.cfm
National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, http://www.niddk.nih.gov
 

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