Voice, Airway & Swallowing Disorders (Laryngology)

Specialized Care for Voice, Airway and Swallowing Disorders

Our voices are essential to helping us communicate with one another. For some people — like teachers, members of the clergy and entertainers — a strong, healthy voice is essential to our livelihood. Whether you use your voice as part of your profession or not, we can help.

Our Team

Laryngologists in the Division of Otolaryngology/Head & Neck Surgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) care for adults with common and rare voice disorders in close collaboration with our specialized speech language pathologists. A laryngologist is a type of ear, nose and throat (ENT) doctor who assesses, diagnoses and treats conditions that affect your larynx, or voice box. These are conditions that may affect the sound and quality of your voice.

We offer a personalized approach that ensures you get the care and treatment that’s right for you.

Conditions We Treat

You can count on expert treatment for these and other voice disorders and conditions.

• Complex upper airway stenosis, together with the Complex Airway Program team in our Chest Disease Center
• Early laryngeal (voice box) cancer
• Laryngeal-mediated cough, paradoxical vocal fold motion, and vocal fold dysfunction
• Laryngitis
• Laryngopharyngeal reflux
• Loss of voice or partial loss of voice
• Gender affirming care
• Muscle Tension or Hyperfunctional dysphonia
• Neurological voice and swallowing disorders
• Recurrent respiratory papillomatosis
• Swallowing disorders (Zenker’s diverticulum and cricopharyngeal dysfunction
• Vocal fold paralysis, vocal fold lesions (polyps, nodules and cysts)

Treating Voice Disorders

Using the latest technologies, our fellowship-trained laryngologists and our speech language pathology team provide advanced evaluation, diagnosis and treatments to give you individualized care. Treatments can be medical, surgical or behavioral.

Our initial consultation will consist of a detailed diagnostic evaluation. If you are presenting for a voice issue and chronic cough, you may be scheduled for a concurrent voice evaluation with one of our voice specializing speech language pathologists. After the visit, you may be scheduled for additional voice therapy and additional referrals when appropriate.

Therapies include:

• Voice therapy
• Swallow therapy
• Respiratory retraining
• Cough suppression
• Disease specific therapies (including Parkinson’s disease, post head and neck cancer treatment)

Please visit our speech language pathology page for additional information on our outpatient speech language pathology services.

In-Office Procedures

We provide modern cutting edge in-office procedures under local anesthesia when appropriate. These are minimally invasive and offer the opportunity for less down time compared to procedures under general anesthesia.

These are some examples of the procedures we offer:

• Flexible laryngoscopy and stroboscopy
• Laryngeal electromyography (EMG)
• Awake bronchoscopy 
• Awake trans-nasal esophagoscopy (TNE)
• 532nm KTP laser
• Vocal fold injections and augmentation
• EMG-guided Botox injections for voice and swallowing disorders
• Superior laryngeal nerve blocks

Minimally invasive techniques reduce your recovery time and the risk of complications. Combined with the latest technology to guide or perform treatments, you’ll be able to communicate with your voice much sooner.