Creative Ways to Wear a Scarf for Patients with a Trach or Ugly Neck Scar

[Watch the video below!!!]

Given I operate on the neck not uncommonly... a common fear for a patient is how the incision will look afterwards. For a simple neck mass excision, the incision almost always heals just fine to the point nobody will notice the scar.

However, this concern is multiplied a hundred-fold when a patient undergoes a tracheostomy (hole in neck) for severe obstructive sleep apnea or for some other airway reason. It could even be a laryngectomy where the entire voicebox is removed for cancer reasons. 

Who wants everybody to know that there's a hole in the neck... especially for a woman??? Even if there's no hole, sometimes the scar IS noticeable, especially after thyroidectomy, and therefore undesirable.

Scarring from an incision can potentially be addressed with dermatologic procedures, but if no surgery is desired and honestly, what really can be done with a hole defect in the neck... it really boils down to a scarf of some kind to obstruct the neck from causal view.

I mistakenly thought there's only 2 ways to wear a scarf around the neck.

The video below shows 25 ways to wear a scarf! Even if a patient or an individual decides NOT to wear a scarf ever... you should STILL watch the video. The video editing is AMAZING!!!

The actress in the video is Wendy Nguyen who is a prolific fashion blogger who my wife pointed out to me one day.

Another Rock Singer With Injured Voice

On Sept 16, 2011, the Stone Temple Pilots had to cancel their tour because their lead singer Scott Weiland was placed on voice rest due to damaged vocal cords at risk for permanent damage. Specifically, the doctors at University of Cincinnati Voice Health Center determined that he had scarring on his left vocal cord and a tremendously inflamed right vocal cord.

The left vocal cord scarring is likely from past vocal trauma that did not heal properly and is now permanently damaged whereas the right vocal cord is at risk of also becoming permanently damaged if not aggressively managed. The picture shown here is an example with inflammation involving both vocal cords. Compare this with the picture below which shows one normal vocal cord and one inflamed vocal cord.

Without further information, beyond voice rest to allow the vocal cord inflammation to resolve without further injury, treatment may also include steroids as well as reflux medication.

It seems to be a continuing trend for singers of all genres to be pushed to the point where their vocal cords get injured resulting in show cancellations and at worst, become a one-hit wonder.

Other singers THIS YEAR alone who have cancelled tours due to voice injury include Kings of Leon, Duran Duran, Adele, The Vaccines, etc

And it's not just rockers, but also opera singers.

If you are a singer and you don't have a voice coach and supportive management, you need to remedy this immediately or you risk having a career that's a one-hit wonder.

New Webpage on Bilateral Vocal Cord Paralysis (or Fixation)

We have written up a new webpage discussing the unfortunate situation of bilateral vocal cord paralysis whereby both breathing and vocal quality is adversely affected.

Treatment for bilateral vocal cord paralysis is difficult and there is no perfect solution. Treatment to improve breathing usually makes the voice worse. Treatment to improve the voice usually makes the breathing worse. The best (but not perfect) treatment tries to pick a happy medium to address the breathing while trying not to hurt the voice too much, though some degradation in vocal quality is to be expected. Such treatment includes posterior cordotomy +/- medial arytenoidectomy.

In another situation, the patient may have bilateral vocal cord fixation resulting in the appearance of vocal cord paralysis, but is potentially "curable" with normal breathing and normal voice being the goal.

Click here to read more! Video and audio also included.

To read more about UNILATERAL vocal cord paralysis, click here. Treatment is completely different than for bilateral vocal cord paralysis.