Voice and Vocal Fold Condition Following Short-Term General Anesthesia: A Prospective Study

Dysphonia, with or without laryngeal changes, has been reported as a complication following prolonged intubation. In contrast, it is unknown if laryngeal changes also occur following short-term airway instrumentation. The objectives of this study were to determine the prevalence of laryngeal changes in patients undergoing short-term routine general anesthesia using an endotracheal tube (ETT) or supraglottic airway (SGA), and to identify predictors to these changes.

Standardized voice assessments were performed preoperatively, postoperatively, and at follow-up on adults undergoing general anesthesia for an elective procedure of less than three hours requiring an ETT or a SGA. The standardized voice assessment protocol comprised a rigid videolaryngostroboscopy, the Voice Handicap Index (VHI), and acoustic voice analysis. The effects of demographic and anesthetic characteristics and type of airway instrumentation on the videolaryngostroboscopic variables were studied using multilevel logistic regression. Multilevel linear regression was used to reveal preoperative versus postoperative changes in VHI and acoustic voice scores.

Overall, the prevalence of postoperative laryngeal changes was low. Significant postoperative laryngeal changes were found for the variables right-sided vocal fold redness in the ETT group (P = 0.048) and right-sided vocal fold blood vessels in both groups (ETT versus SGA). However, after adjustment for all demographic and anesthetic characteristics in the regression model, the effect of the type of airway instrumentation (ETT versus SGA) on the variable right-sided vocal fold redness was no longer significant.

ETT and SGA short-term airway instrumentation are vocal fold function sparing techniques with negligible laryngeal changes.