Health Spotlight | Throat cancer patients speak again
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — It’s something that’s easy to take for granted: speaking.
For some survivors of throat cancer, using their voice just isn’t possible anymore. But now a new device is helping some patients reclaim their speech.
Ben Watson has spent 40 years in entertainment in both TV and music.
But soon after filming a behind-the-scenes video in 2015 for the Chesapeake Bay Blues Festival, Watson got laryngitis, and it kept coming back. It was cancer. To save him, surgeons removed his voice box, rendering him unable to speak on his own.
“It’s overwhelming in a lot of cases. Voice is a lot about our identity,” said Dr. Ana Minisci, MS, CCC-SLP, senior speech-language pathologist at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center.
But through the devastation, hope. Ben is now one of the first in the U.S. to use the AVA Voice to help him speak clearly again. The device attaches to the patient’s throat to capture their breath.
“That air then creates vibration within the device and the patient uses the straw into the mouth to deliver the vibration within the vocal track that way,” Minisci said.
No surgery is required: it can create a voice that’s easier to understand compared to other external speech devices available.
“The AVA Voice is a lot more natural,” Watson said.
Clinicians say AVA Voice creates more options for people who haven’t had a voice prosthesis implanted.
“And that’s really our goal. It’s just finding a voice that meets that person’ needs — whatever that is,” Minisci said.
For Watson, it’s helped him return to his passion: entertaining.
“I feel really good now about where I’m heading,” Watson said.
Laronix, the developers of AVA Voice, are in talks with 32 hospitals across the country to offer this device to more patients, including several medical centers in California, Florida, New York and New Jersey.
This story was created from a script aired on WISH-TV. Health Spotlight is presented by Community Health Network.