Current attitudes of laryngectomy patients

Improved surgical techniques and adjunctive therapeutic measures are producing more long-term survivors of laryngeal carcinoma and facilitating voice preservation through the methods of conservation surgery; however, when surgery includes total laryngectomy, prolonged rehabilitation involving many disciplines may help patients to adjust to many new aspects of their daily lives and to avoid the severe depression which may attend this procedure. In order to evaluate the program currently in use at our institution and to provide suggestions for developing and improving rehabilitative programs, we have used interviews and questionnaires to study 60 laryngectomy patients. The study focused on the patients' attitudes and their impressions of the adequacy of the preoperative and postoperative visits by physicians, speech pathologists, nurses, social workers, and other members of the therapy team.