Total Laryngectomy

History credits Patrick Watson for having performed total Laryngectomy. This happened way back in 1866. Careful study of Patrick Watson’s description of the case has revealed that he performed a tracheostomy on a live patient and performed an autopsy Laryngectomy on the same patient. Ironically the patient died of syphilitic laryngitis. It was Billroth from Vienna who performed the first total Laryngectomy on a patient with growth larynx. This happened on December 31 1873.
Bottini of Turin documented a long surviving patient following total Laryngectomy (10 years).
Gluck critically evaluated total Laryngectomy patients and found that there were significantly high mortality rates (about 50%) during early post operative phases. This prompted him to perform total Laryngectomy in two stages. In the first stage he performed tracheal separation, followed by total Laryngectomy surgery two weeks later. This staging of procedure allowed for healing of tracheocutaneous fistula before the actual Laryngectomy procedure.
In 1890’s Sorenson one of the students of Gluck developed a single staged Laryngectomy procedure. He also envisaged the current popular incision Gluck Sorenson’s incision for total Laryngectomy.

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