The agent that causes the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), associated with the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-CoV-2), produces a spectrum of symptoms that mainly affect the respiratory system, the central nervous system (CNS), the regulation of hemostasis and the immune system.
Bilateral vocal fold paralysis (BVFP) is a condition of unknown incidence among infected patients, either because it is short-lived or because of the difficulty in establishing a direct cause to the virus.
Viral infection has been described in the literature as a cause of BVFP and there is the suspicion that a proportion of the idiopathic cases are due to undiagnosed viral infections.
Although the neurotropic mechanisms for SARS-CoV-2 remain unclear, there is strong evidence to ensure its neuroinvasive potential.
The most frequent etiologies of BVFP are trauma, neoplasm, and neurological, but a viral origin should not be ruled out. Causality between COVID-19 and BVFP is plausible and will require further study in the short and long term.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.