Vocal Cord Gel Could Revive Damaged Voices
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Pixland/Thinkstock(BOSTON) — Researchers in Boston have discovered a gel that could repair vocal cord damage and help people with hoarse voices.
The artificial vocal cord material replaces a layer of the vocal structure to restore flexibility, allowing the vocal folds to vibrate more easily, which creates sound, said Dr. Steven Zeitels, director of the Center for Laryngeal Surgery and Voice Rehabilitation at Massachusetts General Hospital. He hopes for the biomaterial developed and tested with MIT chemical engineering professor Robert Langer to reach human trials next year.
Vocal cords can develop scarring a number of ways, including cancer and overuse from singing, but it can also come from normal wear and tear, such as shouting over a group of students every day in a classroom, Zeitels said.
“There’s probably no part of the human body that sees more trauma in a lifetime,” Zeitels said, adding that when he measured Steven Tyler’s vocal cords during a concert in 2007, his vocal cords collided 7,800 times.
The vocal cords, or folds, are made up of three layers: a surface layer, the middle layer (gelatinous) and the deepest layer (muscle), said Dr. Milan Amin, the director of New York University’s Voice Center. When the middle gel-like layer is damaged, the top layer sticks to the bottom layer and interrupts vibration, causing hoarseness, he said. This is called vocal scarring.
Zeitel said he hopes to inject the gel into the vocal folds’ outer membrane to decrease stiffness from scarring. It would have to be replaced, but he hopes it will be long-lasting.
The throat surgeon treated singer Adele last year when she came to him with vocal bleeding, and Major League Baseball announcer Joe Buck, when a virus paralyzed his vocal nerve last spring. He also became Julie Andrews’ doctor after a routine surgery ruined her famous singing voice in the 1990s.
But Zeitels said the gel, which he developed with Langer, won’t make Andrews sing like she did in The Sound of Music just yet. To restore vocal ranges like Andrews’, he’ll need an even more advanced gel, “the perfect material.”
“Singers won’t get this for ages,” Zeitels said. “We have to fix the cancer patients first.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio