Word: staffiery
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Dates: during 1979-1979
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...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...
...Staffieri has performed the operation on 137 patients, with a success rate of 90%. At first, his technique did not get much attention in the U.S., partly because American specialists did not know much about it. But in 1976, at the urging of U.S. Air Force Surgeon Frederick McConnel, who had seen Staffieri's work, Northwestern University's Dr. George Sisson tried the operation on a throat cancer patient deeply depressed at the prospect of losing her voice. The results were remarkable, as were those of another early patient, Bessie Parello, who could speak 20 minutes...
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