Abstrakt
Laryngeal cancer is the most frequent cancer in the head and neck area. Approximately one third of patients are treated by total laryngectomy (TL).
The rate of the patient's adaptation to new conditions is crucial to the quality of his or her future life. Some patients survive tens of years after this operation.
The preparation for TL is a comlicated proces that affects a patient's cooperation in postsurgical time. The patient is informed of the essence of the disease, treatment possibilities, the proces of preoperatiive preparation, as well as the operation itself.
Great emphasis is put on awareness of the postoperative development, the patient's good cooperation, as well as good prognosis of the disease. Losing one's voice and the cosmetic defects caused by the tracheostoma are a great problem for the patient.
The aim of this study was to show the main problems that patients after total laryngectomy deal with in common life.