Ultrasonography versus laryngoscopy in assessment of laryngeal pathologies

Abstract EN

This study was designed to investigate the potential role of ultrasound in the diagnosis of laiyngeal pathologies and to evaluate its reliability and validity as compared to the standard of video-laryngoscopic assessment.

Gray-scale, B-mode realtime ultrasound of the larynx was carried out in 35 patients with a variety of laryngeal lesions and 21 subjects with no detectable laryngeal lesions.

Ultrasonographic findings correlated with laryngoscopy findings in 66% of cases (37/56).

Laryngeal ultrasound correctly predicted the laryngoscopy findings in only 20 of 35 cases with various lesions (i.e.

sensitivity - 57%), it also correctly identified that no lesion was present in 17 of 21 normal cases (i.e.

specificity = 81%).

Such sensitivity of laryngeal ultrasound varied with the lesion type and size.

The sensitivity was 77.7% in laryngeal paralysis, 44% in cases with minimal vocal fold pathologies, and 60% in cases with infiltrating laryngeal lesions.

The technique had a positive predictive value of 83% (20/24) and a negative predictive value of 53% (17/32) for detecting laryngeal pathology as compared to the standard of videolaryngoscopy.

Ultrasonography identified presence of an infiltration of the thyroid cartilage, presence of cervical lymph nodes, and thyroid gland disorder, otherwise no additional advantages was available.

This study indicates that ultrasound is a safe and non-invasive tool that may have sortie role in investigation of laryngeal pathology, but further fine-tuning of the technique may be necessary.