Laser technique improves head and neck cancer surgery
4/22/2007 Topeka, KS staff 49news (www.49abcnews.com) "This is about as good as you're gonna get on this TV," Charlie Osborne said. Osborne is grateful technology's improved over the years. But he never appreciated it more than during his recent battle with throat cancer. "They would have had to cut out my voice box. That was the only other option. If this happened four years ago, that was still the standard procedure," Osborne said. He had a tumor in his neck the size of a golf ball. Typically, doctors would perform radical surgery to remove it. "He would have had a tracheotomy, at least temporarily, an opening in the neck. And he would have ended up having a feeding tube in his stomach because he was having so much trouble with his swallowing," head and neck surgeon Dr. Miriam Lango said. Instead, Dr. Lango used a minimally invasive procedure called transoral laser surgery. "We can access tumors not through the neck, but actually through the mouth," Lango said. The carbon dioxide laser is an intense beam of energy that cuts and seals the tissue simultaneously. "You are able to cut very precisely without having blood in your field. So you can really distinguish between normal tissue and tumor tissue," Lango said. Because the laser is less invasive, patients have a lower risk of infection and a faster recovery. "Patients have much less trouble with swallowing and with speech. Often times the speech is almost normal after the surgery," Lango said. Dr. [...]