Vol.95 No.3 contentsPRACTICA OTO-RHINO-LARYNGOLOGICA
Vol. 95 No. 3 March 2002
Non-recurrent Laryngeal Nerve; A Case Study
Tomoko Hirose
(Toyooka Hospital)
Ryo Asato, Shinzo Tanaka, Yasuyuki Hiratsuka, Shigeru Hirano,
Ken-ichi Kaneko, Hisayoshi Kojima, Juichi Ito and Hiroyuki Ueda
(Kyoto University)
Recurrent laryngeal nerve injury is an important complication of thyroid cancer operation. Therefore, before surgery for thyroid cancer, it is important to establish whether the patient has non-recurrent laryngeal nerve (NRLN), which is an anomaly associated with the aberrant right subclavian artery.
Our patient was a sixty-year-old female, in whom NRLN was detected prior to surgery for thyroid cancer. In this case, enhanced CT revealed a vascular image running behind the esophagus at the level of the upper margin of the aortic arch and subsequent MRA revealed the aberrant right subclavian artery.
Enhanced CT scanning between the neck and the upper margin of the aortic arch can show aberrant right subclavian artery. Thus, in patient with thyroid cancer, enhanced CT is useful not only to evaluate lymph node metastasis but also to reveal the NRLN.
Key words : non-recurrent laryngeal nerve, thyroid cancer operation, aberrant right subclavian artery, enhanced CT