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The treatment of vocal fold polyps
is generally either voice therapy or surgery.
Right.
So if you wanna be more conservative
or you think the polyp might go away,
you may try voice therapy.
Depending on the size of the polyp,
some are very responsive to voice therapy,
and a little bit of rehab can make the polyp
significantly smaller or make it go away completely,
or at least make patients feel that they can function
in every way that they need to with their voice.
And in those cases,
surgery wouldn't necessarily be indicated.
Yeah, even if the polyp is there,
it doesn't have to be taken off,
if you can do the things with your voice
that you want to do.
For those who have very large polyps
and they're not happy with their voice,
or those unresponsive to voice therapy,
surgery is usually indicated,
and that's done through the mouth.
It's microsurgery.
We don't cut the polyp off, because if we do,
there's a large area that just has to heal, that scars,
and the result is unreliable.
So what we do is microflap surgery.
We actually open the vocal fold,
lift up the skin, and then scoop out the polyp.
Put the skin back down-- that's the flap--
and that allows it to heal very quickly
with minimal scarring, and that optimizes your outcome.
And patients who have surgery for vocal fold polyp
would then be urged to do a little bit of voice therapy
after the surgery, to complete their recovery.
Yeah, it helps with the recovery,
and also because it's a traumatic lesion,
it helps decrease the chance of it returning,
because you'll stop traumatizing your voice
and learn more better behaviors.
Right.