Hi guys, I had a surgery to trim the back ends of my hyoid on both sides and my thyroid cartilage horns which were catching on eachother when swallowing. This did mostly get rid of the clicking in the throat, which actually wasn’t too bothersome for me anyway, but didn’t get rid of the restricted upward movement of the throat when swallowing, which is the main issue, besides other likely unrelated symptoms.
I am due to go back for a another surgery to trim down the thyroid lamina. So essentially the top and sides of the Adams apple. This will hopefully allow the thyroid cartilage and throat to elevate as it should instead of the cartilage seemingly getting stuck / blocked from moving upwards by the hyoid bone. My guess is this is due to some inflammatory change and calcification of the thyroid cartilage, changing it’s size and shape and stopping up from moving up in it’s normal plane of movement. As well as the thyroid cartilage and hyoid sitting too close together for some reason.
I could be entirely wrong and there may be something else limiting the swallow movement as well, but it’s the best I have to go on.
My question is, given the cartilage that’s going to be trimmed and likely the thyroid cartilage able to lift/elevate higher, would this impact the laryngeal nerve and artery? As in when the cartilage lifts during swallow, would it not squash these?
I’ve attached an image with blue arrows to the nerve/artery I am referring to and a green line across the cartilage representing roughly where it will be cut/trimmed down.
