Aortic Laryngeal Rehabilitation Graft

The larynx is a cartilaginous organ of the respiratory system located in the throat, which plays an essential role in respiratory function, swallowing and sound production.

In the case of advanced tumours, the surgical option most often remains total laryngectomy, with the corollary of a major impact on quality of life, not so much because of the loss of voice, but because of the presence of a definitive tracheostoma with particularly deleterious consequences.

The majority of the work of the different teams around the world has focused on restoring phonatory function, but no technique - apart from the artificial larynx developed in the ENT department of the Hautepierre Hospital - has yet succeeded in removing the tracheotomy orifice, requiring the restoration of a common passage between the respiratory and swallowing passages. If nutrition and phonatory function can still be supplemented after such an operation (oesophageal rehabilitation, implant placed between the trachea and oesophagus), natural breathing is no longer possible. Patients are forced to wear a permanent tracheotomy opening.

There are currently only 2 ways to try to restore all the functions of the larynx after total laryngectomy: i) laryngeal transplantation, but this procedure requires maintaining immunosuppressive treatment, which is not possible in patients suffering from cancer of the larynx, which is not a vital organ, ii) artificial larynx made of biomaterials (titanium), the first cases of which were performed worldwide in the ENT department of the Strasbourg University Hospital in 2012, results published in the NEJM (API 2008-2009 HUS No. 4493- IDRCB No.: 2011-A00032-39. However, difficulties were encountered with the use of the titanium prosthesis due to the bulk and rigidity of the removable and non-removable part, which caused residual swallowing difficulties (false routes).

It is now possible, due to the development of new allograft techniques in humans for tracheal replacement (studies published on a large number of cases with several years of hindsight, cf. references), to switch to the "all biological" using an aortic graft stented with a silicone stent. We wish to use these grafts in laryngeal restoration after total laryngectomy by our team, while exploiting all the data and experience acquired (unique in the world) within the ENT department of Hautepierre Hospital. This new conceptual leap should make it possible to significantly improve the patient's quality of life and the performance previously acquired in clinical trials on the artificial larynx in its entirety (breathing, phonation) or partially (swallowing).

The investigators thus propose to evaluate this new artificial larynx in aortic allograft, the objective of which is to supplement the respiratory, swallowing and phonation functions in patients laryngectomized for carcinological causes.