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Temporal bone osteoradionecrosis (TBORN) is a rare complication of head and neck radiotherapy. It usually presents as a unilateral disorder with a long latency between the exposition to radiation and the symptoms onset, which might overlap with other clinical entities, making it difficult to establish the diagnosis. It can be classified as localized, when confined to the tympanic bone; or diffuse, when extended to other portions of the temporal bone, with the inherent implication in treatment selection and prognosis. The authors present a case of a 53 years old patient with multiple comorbidities, including an immunosuppressive state, who presented an infected massive diffuse TBORN bilaterally. The diagnosis was challenging and the patient was initially treated for a malignant otitis externa, but after established diagnosis of TBORN, the patient was treated resorting to surgery, topical treatment and hyperbaric oxygenotherapy, with consequent symptoms resolution. This case illustrates the difficulty in establishing the diagnosing and treatment of TBORN and highlights the importance of a low suspicion threshold for this rare complication of radiotherapy, for which there is still no consensus regarding the best treatment.

Unilateral vocal fold paralysis (UVFP) is a frequent finding in otorhinolaryngology practice, but its occurrence as a port complication was very rarely described in English Literature. The authors report a 55-year-old woman with a pancreatic adenocarcinoma who presented a left vocal fold paralysis that occurred concurrently with a venous thrombosis of the left subclavian vein, where a totally implantable venous-access had been previously placed. Although the patient’s oncologic disease, that could mislead to a neoplastic cause of the UVFP, the authors came across with an unusual etiology and to their best knowledge, it is the first case of irreversible UVFP associated with onsite thrombosis of the vessel where a port was implanted. The objective of this article is to present and discuss this rare case of UVFP secondary to a port complication and to review the main mechanisms of iatrogenic vocal fold paralysis related to these devices.

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