第2262期:Man Regains his Voice with the Help of a rare Medical Operation

A man in the Northeastern state of Massachusetts has regained his voice after a rare operation.美国东北部马萨诸塞州的一名男子在一次罕见的手术后重新获得了声音。

Marty Kedian received a total transplant of his larynx, the organ responsible for speech, commonly called the “voice box.”马蒂·基迪安接受了一个完整的喉头移植手术，喉头是负责发声的器官，通常称为“声箱”。

Transplants of the larynx are very unusual and normally are not available to people with active cancer. Kedian is only the third person in the United States to receive a total larynx transplant. Doctors removed Kedian’s cancerous larynx and replaced it with a donated one.喉头移植非常罕见，通常不适用于患有活动性癌症的人。基迪安是美国第三个接受完整喉头移植的人。医生移除了基迪安的癌变喉头，并用捐赠的喉头替换。

Surgeons at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona offered Kedian the transplant as part of a new study. The study, known as a clinical trial, aims to open the operation to more patients, including some with cancer, the most common way to lose a larynx.亚利桑那州梅奥诊所的外科医生为基迪安提供了这次移植手术，作为一项新研究的一部分。该研究被称为临床试验，旨在向更多患者开放此手术，包括一些癌症患者，这是喉头最常见的丧失方式。

“People need to keep their voice,” 59-year-old Kedian told the Associated Press four months after the transplant operation. His voice sounded rough, but he was able to keep up a discussion for an hour. He added, “I want people to know this can be done.”“人们需要保持他们的声音，”59岁的基迪安在移植手术四个月后告诉美联社。他的声音听起来粗糙，但他能够进行一个小时的讨论。他补充说：“我想让人们知道这是可以做到的。”

Kedian became emotional when describing the first time he phoned his 82-year-old mother after the surgery, “and she could hear me…That was important to me, to talk to my mother.”基迪安在描述手术后第一次打电话给他82岁的母亲时变得情绪激动，“她能听见我……对我来说，能够与母亲交谈非常重要。”

The study is small — just nine more people will take part. But it permits scientists to learn more about these complex transplants. One day, doctors might offer these operations to more people who cannot breathe, swallow or speak on their own because of a damaged or surgically removed larynx.该研究规模较小——只有另外九人将参与。但它允许科学家更多地了解这些复杂的移植手术。某一天，医生可能会为更多因喉头受损或手术移除而无法自行呼吸、吞咽或说话的人提供这些手术。

Dr. David Lott is chair of Head and Neck Surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona. He said he started the study because “my patients tell me, ‘Yeah, I may be alive but I’m not really living.’”大卫·洛特博士是亚利桑那州梅奥诊所头颈外科的主任。他说他开始这项研究是因为“我的病人告诉我，‘是的，我可能活着，但我并没有真正生活。’”

Lott’s team reported early results of the surgery recently in the publication Mayo Clinic Proceedings.洛特的团队最近在《梅奥诊所学报》上报告了手术的早期结果。

The larynx might be best known as the voice box. But the larynx is also important for breathing and swallowing. Muscular tissue flaps called vocal cords open to let air into the lungs, close to prevent food or drink from going the wrong way and move when air pushes past them to produce speech.喉头可能最为人所知的是作为声箱。但喉头对于呼吸和吞咽也很重要。被称为声带的肌肉组织瓣膜打开以让空气进入肺部，关闭以防止食物或饮料进入错误的通道，并在空气推过它们时移动以产生语音。

The first two U.S. larynx transplants took place at the Cleveland Clinic in 1998 and the University of California, Davis, in 2010. The patients who received them had lost their voices to injuries.美国的前两例喉头移植分别于1998年在克利夫兰诊所和2010年在加利福尼亚大学戴维斯分校进行。接受移植的患者因受伤失去了声音。