Funding outcome

Unilateral vocal cord paralysis (the inability or loss of function of one of the vocal cords) can occur from many different causes and can have negative impacts on a person's voice and swallowing. In children, one of the most common ways this can happen is due to injury of one of the nerves that controls the vocal cords during heart or chest surgery. These instances are likely underreported, and it was previously assumed that these symptoms usually resolve over time. More recent data has shown that although the symptoms do resolve with time for some patients, there is also a large amount of patients that need surgery to fix these problems, as the symptoms have persisted for months or even years after heart surgery. These surgical methods, such as a procedure called laryngeal reinnervation (attaching a different nerve to give input to the vocal cord) seem to have positive short term outcomes, but there is not much data showing long term outcomes of these patients, or which patients benefit most from surgery. This study aims to gather more information about the long term outcomes of patients with unilateral vocal cord paralysis that have been treated with and without laryngeal reinnervation surgery.