Long-term results of provox voice prosthesis for voice rehabilitation after total laryngectomy “A seven years experience”

Abstract

The increasing use of voice prostheses has improved the prospects of voice rehabilitation in laryngectomised patients. Provox voice prosthesis is a low resistance, indwelling silicon voice prosthesis, which is recently widely used in many centers.The purpose of this study is to present the long-term results obtained using provox voice prostheses. Patient's problems voice, quality and complications are discussed.During the last 7 years, 100 laryngectomised patients have been using 375 Provox voice prostheses. There were 92 (92%) men and 8 (8%) women. Age ranged from 31 to 69 years (mean 54.3 years). Mean lifetime of the prosthesis was 14.6 months. The main reason for valve replacement was leakage through the prosthesis (73.4%) followed by leakage around the prosthesis (10.4%). Spontaneous dislocation occurred in 5 prostheses (12%), all were Provox 2. The voice was rated good in 85 patients (85%), fair in 10 patients (10%) and 5 patients (5%) had poor voice in which three of them had no prosthetic voice.In conclusion, long-term results of provox voice prosthesis for speech rehabilitation following total laryngectomy are favorable with low complication rate and a long device lifetime.