Once a year, Ivan Douglas makes the trip from Fredericton to the QEII Health Sciences Centre in Halifax for a check-up. The 62-year-old was diagnosed with laryngeal cancer back in 2007 after a tumour was found on his right vocal cord. He underwent radiation, but the cancer came back a year later.

“You can only radiate the same area once, so they couldn’t radiate that area again and there the next step would be to remove my voice box,” Douglas recalls.

Instead of going ahead with the surgery right away, Douglas was referred to QEII head and neck surgeon Dr. Mark Taylor.

“He looked at my scans and he came back and he said ‘You know, I think I can help you.’”

“The majority of these we treat with a minimally invasive type of surgery called transoral laser microsurgery,” says Dr. Taylor.

Dr. Taylor says with early stage laryngeal cancer, like Douglas’, transoral laser microsurgery, or TLM, is 80 to 90 per cent effective.

The surgery takes about two hours and uses a laser instead of a blade.

“It’s surgery that’s done through the mouth. There’s no external incisions. They have a general anesthetic for it,” Dr. Taylor tells CTV News. “We use microscopic instruments and the laser itself is just a means to cut the cancer out.”

Dr. Matthew Rigby is also a head and neck surgeon at the hospital.

He says there are many advantages to TLM compared to other treatments, including low recovery time and fewer side effects.

“Radiation is six to seven weeks of treatment,” Dr. Rigby says. “It’s 15 minutes of actual treatment, but that’s going to take an hour or two of your days and you get side effects such as fatigue.”

Most patients only spend a day in the hospital and can quickly return to normal life, but Dr. Rigby says the biggest advantage is keeping the voice box in tact.

“You speak through it, you breathe through it, and whether most people think of it or not, it actually helps protect their lungs when you’re swallowing,” Dr. Rigby says. “So the cancer and the treatments both threaten those functions.”

Douglas is thankful to be cancer free and still have his voice.

“You take for granted your voice like walking, like anything else, but to know that you could lose it, it was drastic. It wasn’t what I wanted to hear.”