What are the symptoms of recurrent laryngeal nerve injury

summary

I recently found myself hoarse, want to speak and feel speechless, but went to the hospital to do an examination. The final result of the examination was that my recurrent laryngeal nerve was damaged. The doctor said it might be caused by some activities of me. Now I would like to talk about the symptoms of recurrent laryngeal nerve injury.

What are the symptoms of recurrent laryngeal nerve injury

First, unilateral recurrent laryngeal nerve injury (unilateral recurrent laryngeal nerve paralysis) is the paralysis of abductor muscle and adductor muscle on one side, but the superior laryngeal nerve is still normal, so cricothyroid muscle can maintain abductor and adductor function. There is no habit of routine exploration of recurrent laryngeal nerve during operation. Sometimes suspicious tissues are encountered and not traced, so it is easy to injure the nerve by mistake. The nerve is excessively stretched or the blood supply is insufficient after nerve exposure. The recurrent laryngeal nerve is compressed by postoperative edema or hematoma, or the recurrent laryngeal nerve is compressed by postoperative scar tissue contraction.

Second, hoarseness and phonation weakness are the only symptoms of unilateral recurrent laryngeal nerve paralysis. When the healthy vocal cord can exceed the midline and contact with the affected vocal cord in the future, the voice will be improved, and this paralysis will not cause dyspnea. The degree of cough weakness is consistent with hoarseness. Some patients with unilateral recurrent laryngeal nerve injury have only mild hoarseness and vocal weakness, which are easy to be missed.

Third, bilateral recurrent laryngeal nerve injury (bilateral recurrent laryngeal nerve paralysis) is mostly caused by extensive thyroid surgery. After bilateral recurrent laryngeal nerve injury, there is usually a short history of hoarseness. Coughing is weak. As the bilateral vocal cords are close to the midline, they can not abduct when inhaled, and the sound is not affected, but they have severe dyspnea. Neck trauma such as bullet wound, penetrating wound, knife cut and so on can make the nerve injured.

matters needing attention

With the above simple introduction, I believe that many people have a certain understanding of the clinical symptoms of this phenomenon, usually must protect themselves. For some of the recurrent laryngeal nerve injury related surgery, we must be careful nursing, so as to avoid the occurrence of this phenomenon.