Cysts of the Larynx

Abstract

Cysts of the larynx occur less frequently than the literature of thirty or forty years ago would indicate. There is no doubt that polypi of various kinds were included when cysts were considered at that time.One can appreciate this, for even at the present time the classification of benign neoplasms of the larynx is not well understood. Cysts do, however, occur more frequently than textbooks and current literature would lead one to believe.The first laryngeal cyst on record was encountered by Verneuil1 in the cadaver of an infant in 1852. Durham 2 was probably the first to observe a cyst in a living person. In 1863, he operated on a large cyst which sprang from the laryngeal surface of the epiglottis in a boy 11 years of age. Gibb 3 removed a cystic growth from the vocal cord of a patient in the same year. Of 693 laryngeal tumors which Beschorner 4 reviewed in 1877, 45 were cystic tumors. The first large series of instances of laryngeal cyst, 117 in number, were collected by Moure 5 in 1881. Ullrich6 included 156 cases in his paper a few years later.Since then there have been several fine articles on this subject, notably those of Salomon,7 Glas,8 Schneider,9 Marx10 and New.11 Instructive case reports and short articles have been written by several laryn¬ gologiste. Some have seen many cases, while others have seen only a few.

Oncocytic variant of a ductal retention cyst in the interarytenoid region

“…Verneuil (1852) originally divided the laryngeal cysts into retention, congenital, lymph or blood and traumatic or implantation cysts 4 . A revised classification into ductal and saccular cysts was made based on location and depth of the cyst in the larynx 5 .…”

Clinical and morphological aspects of laryngeal cysts

“…In contrast, Michaels [6] found their most common site to be in the ventricle or ventricular folds. Myerson [19] separated laryngeal cysts into four types: retention, congenital, traumatic, and lymph or blood cysts. De Santo et al [6] presented a new classification in which the cysts were categorized as being either ductal or saccular.…”

“…Normally, laryngeal cysts are easily diagnosed and simply treated by microlaryngoscopy. To our knowledge, only a few defined studies have been carried out to date [2,3,6,19,22]. The aim of this study was to characterize laryngeal cysts according to their histological structures and their localizations in the larynx as well as to discuss theories about their genesis.…”

A Vallecular Cyst as a Cause of Hemoptysis in an Adult

“…lymph or blood cysts. 5 However, the most popular classification was by DeSanto as he classified laryngeal cysts into ductal cysts which account for 75% of laryngeal cysts and saccular cysts which account for 25% of laryngeal cysts. 4 Ductal cysts were the result of submucous gland obstruction and subsequent fluid retention and were mostly found at the vallecula.…”

“…4 Newman et al gave classification based on histological diagnosis, while Arens et al used histomorphology and location to classify laryngeal cysts. 1,5 Presenting symptoms vary depending upon its size, amount of airway obstruction as well as age of the patient. In infants respiratory stridor and dyspnea are noted, whereas in older children feeding difficulties and failure to thrive are the most common symptoms.…”