Word: pharynx
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ORAL ALERT The same nasty human papillomavirus that scientists know causes cervical cancer may be linked to even more types of malignancies. Norwegian scientists report the best evidence yet that HPV-16, a strain of the virus, doubles the risk of larynx, pharynx and tonsil cancers. The explanation is not so farfetched: HPV-16 can transform normal cells in the mucous membranes--like those lining both the cervix and oral cavity--into cancerous squamous cells. How does HPV get to the mouth in the first place? The most likely pathway is oral...
...surgeon must create a small hole in the throat for breathing. But talking is another matter. Some people can learn to gulp air through the mouth, force it down the esophagus, or gullet, instead of the windpipe, and literally burp it back up into a cavity called the pharynx, where a rough facsimile of the natural voice is produced. But like all too many throat cancer patients, Parello was never able to master such esophageal speech. "I just couldn't do it," she recalls. "My children learned to understand me by lip reading. My husband couldn't understand...
...decades doctors had tried to divert air from the windpipe back up into the blocked-off pharynx. But such efforts inevitably failed; food and water would get into the windpipe, causing choking. In 1969 Dr. Mario Staffieri of Piacenza, near Milan, Italy, tried a new approach, inspired by a famous case in medical annals. Forty years earlier, a Chicago iceman, suicidally depressed by the loss of his voice after a laryngectomy, had plunged an ice pick into his throat. Instead of dying, he regained the ability to speak; he had accidentally pierced the esophagus wall in a way that gave...
...duplicate that miracle, Staffieri made a small slit in the esophagus of a laryngectomy patient. Then he flapped part of the esophageal wall over the top of the trachea, forming a valve linking windpipe and pharynx. To speak, the patient simply placed a finger over the external breathing hole in the neck. Exhaled from the lungs, air was forced through the internal esophageal slit, allowing the pharynx to vibrate and create sounds. But the valve could open only when air from the lungs forced it open. When food or liquid came down the esophagus, the valve remained closed...
...report. Based on a review of more than 2,000 research studies made in the past three years, the report repeats that cigarette tars can cause lung cancer; it depressingly documents further evidence that the weed can bring on peptic ulcers, aortic aneurysm, cancer of the larynx, mouth, pharynx, esophagus and bladder. A two-pack-a-day smoker aged 55 to 64, says the report, has 34 times more chance of dying of lung cancer than a nonsmoker. But an equally grave danger may be coronary heart disease caused by the massive doses of nicotine and carbon monoxide in cigarettes...