PREVALENCE OF ALLERGY IN PATIENTS WITH BENIGN LESIONS OF THE VOCAL FOLDS

MUSTAFA DENIZ YILMAZ¹, HULYA EYIGORI¹, USTUN OSMA¹, OMER TARıK SELÇUK¹, LEVENT RENDA¹, IRFAN PIRTIK¹, ARZU DIDEM YALCIN²

¹Department of ENT Head and Neck Surgery, Antalya Education and Research Hospital - ²Department of Internal Medicine, Allergy and Clinical Immunology, Antalya Education and Research Hospital, Turkey

Objective: Allergy commonly affects the upper and lower airways concurrently. Although allergic inflammations effects on nasal and pulmonary diseases have been well described, allergic inflammations effects on the larynx are not compietely well understood. We investigated the prevalence of allergy in patients with benign lesions of the vocal folds and types of allergens causing these reactions.

Materials and methods: Laryngeal examination was done by rigid laryngoscope and lesions of each patients were recorded. All patients underwent skin prick tests on the forearm with a full set of 35 common allergens. Results: Forty patients(15 male and 25 female)with vocal fold pathology were included. Twenty two(55%) subject swere affected by vocal polyps, 12(27.5%) by nodules, 7 (17.5%) by Reinke’s edema. Skin prick tests resulted positive in 60% of the patients.The most common allergen found was mite mixture(47,5%) and weed mixture (42.5%).

Conclusion: Skin prick tests were found to be highy positive in patients with benign lesions of vocal folds compared to normal population. Further research is needed to identify the underlying pathways mediating the laryngeal response to allergy to develop better diagnostic and therapeutic techniques