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MGH researchers report successful new
laser treatment for injured singers
Patients treated include Aerosmith's
Steven Tyler, who has returned to performing
BOSTON - August 17, 2006 - A new type of laser for voice
surgery (phonosurgery), utilized for the first time at Massachusetts
General Hospital (MGH), has allowed Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler
to resume performing after a tour-ending vocal injury. Recently,
he and Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry headlined the annual Boston
Pops July Fourth Esplanade concert.
Earlier this year Tyler, an icon in rock music, sustained bleeding
into a vocal cord. Years of athletic vocal performance had led to
the development of abnormal blood vessels that were predisposed
to further injury. In March, Aerosmith's current tour was cancelled
so that Tyler could have his traumatized vocal-cord vessels surgically
treated by Steven Zeitels, MD, director of the MGH
Voice Center. Tyler has recovered from the procedure, and the
band is currently recording prior to their upcoming tour, which
gets underway in September.
Zeitels explains, "We previously adapted lasers that target
blood vessels for use in the treatment of precancerous vocal-cord
dysplasia. We then applied that experience to institute a new treatment
strategy for one of the most common career-stopping problems in
singers, which is vocal-cord bleeding that can also lead to the
formation of benign growths such as polyps and nodes (nodules)."
Zeitels is the Eugene B. Casey Chair of Laryngeal Surgery at Harvard
Medical School.
A lifetime of singing can place vocalists at increased risk for
vocal cord injury, similar to the risk of other injuries faced by
high-performance athletes. This risk can occur with any singing
style - rock, pop, opera or music theater - and is strongly associated
with high-intensity performances. Zeitels has been treating elite
singers for many years and was called on to work with Julie Andrews
after she lost her singing voice due to a failed surgical procedure.
He subsequently has collaborated with Miss Andrews to increase awareness
of voice problems and spearhead a research project addressing her
type of injury.
In treating Tyler, Zeitels utilized his group's most recent innovation,
a pulsed Potassium-Titanyl-Phosphate (KTP) laser. The standard continuous-firing
KTP laser has been utilized in the past by surgeons as a tissue-cutting
and ablating instrument. The MGH team is the first in the world
to treat vocal cords and the rest of the larynx with accurately
controlled pulses of KTP laser light. The Pulsed-KTP laser has dramatically
elevated the precision and ease of laryngeal surgical procedures
by more effectively controlling bleeding while being substantially
gentler on the delicate vocal-cord tissue.
In scientific presentations at the American Otolaryngology meetings
in May, the MGH researchers reported successful results in treating
approximately 40 singers over the past 5 years - including Steven
Tyler and Metropolitan Opera star Carol Vaness - with laser technology
that targets blood vessels. They also reported another investigation
using the Pulsed-KTP laser to treat vocal-cord dysplasia and papillomatosis
as an office-based clinic procedure avoiding general anesthesia.
This first reliable office-based treatment of these diseases evolved
from a close collaboration between Zeitels and colleague R. Rox
Anderson, MD, director of the MGH Wellman
Center for Photomedicine. Previously the team had established
the efficacy of angiolytic (targeting and shrinking blood vessels)
lasers in microsurgical treatment of vocal-cord dysplasia with the
Pulsed-Dye laser, which was also valuable for treating respiratory
papillomatosis.
"The Pulsed-KTP laser is currently the optimal angiolytic laser
for vocal cord problems. It has greatly enhanced the precision by
which we can perform many voice procedures, both in the operating
room accompanied by the surgical microscope and in the office treating
chronic laryngeal diseases. The Pulsed-KTP laser is an critical
innovation in the instrumentation arsenal of the laryngeal surgeon,"
says Zeitels.
The MGH and HMS instituted one of the first academic programs in
Laryngology in the United States in 1870. The MGH program was discontinued
in the 1920s and was reestablished
less than two years ago with the philanthropic assistance of the
Eugene B. Casey Foundation and the Institute of Laryngology and
Voice Restoration, a patient-based organization with the mission
to further research, clinical care and education in laryngeal and
voice disorders. The current research efforts have been catalyzed
by a unique, cooperative, and synergistic effort among these organizations.
Massachusetts General Hospital, established in 1811, is the original
and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. The MGH
conducts the largest hospital-based research program in the United
States, with an annual research budget of nearly $500 million and
major research centers in AIDS, cardiovascular research, cancer,
computational and integrative biology, cutaneous biology, human
genetics, medical imaging, neurodegenerative disorders, regenerative
medicine, transplantation biology and photomedicine. MGH and Brigham
and Women's Hospital are founding members of Partners HealthCare
HealthCare System, a Boston-based integrated health care delivery
system.
Media Contact: Emily
Parker, MGH Public Affairs
Physician Referral Service: 1-800-388-4644
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