For those who got their styloids removed, does this mean all the attachments got removed as well? Including the stylopharyngeus muscle, styloglossus muscle, stylohyoid muscle, stylomandibular ligament. Thank you for sharing!
If I’m honest, I don’t know! There’s a clip on YouTube of an intraoral surgery you could watch if you’re not squeamish, there might be others but I know some members have seen one. That might answer some of your questions.
As most of us find little or no difference with speech & swallowing after surgery, I can only presume that they all have a minimal role. If you get an appt with a surgeon, it’s a good question to ask! Sorry I can’t be more helpful!
Hi sjayjay10,
Calcification of the styloid hyoid ligament can occur along w/ styloid elongation. If it does, the stylohyoid ligament needs to be removed as well. I know of only one case where the stylomandibular ligament was also removed during ES surgery because it had some calcification & that was w/o a negative post op effect. The muscles are taken off the styloid (kind of scraped off) but not removed from the body. The muscles heal post op, & I presume fill in the space where the styloids were. The stylohyoid ligament plays a very small role in swallowing, according to Dr. Samji who is the most experienced ES surgeon on our doctors’ list. As Jules said, most people find this does not affect speech or swallowing after surgery.
There is also a video of external ES surgery on YouTube now. For a long time only the intraoral approach was posted on there.
Hi @Isaiah_40_31,
Thank you for the details.
I did take a look at an external ES surgery video on Youtube. The bone was literally burned off and the lingual artery was torn through like butter. There are so many little details like this that seem to be missing when reading up on what surgery will entail.
Not looking forward this this experience at all 
sjayjay910 -
I just re-watched the video of the external surgery. It took place in Italy 4+ years ago. I expect that surgical practices may have advanced to some degree since then. Experienced ES surgeons are very cautious about vascular tissues & nerves. Nerves are monitored & vascular tissues are moved out of the way as opposed to being “torn through”. In the video, any vascular tissue that needed to be cut was clamped on each side first then cut. The styloid process was removed from the skull base using a grinding tool. I’m not sure that any of the vascular tissues that were injured during the video could definitively be identified by the viewer. I certainly expect that the surgeon wouldn’t intentionally cut anything that would have a long-term impact on the patient’s health. That’s not to say that things never go wrong during surgery because all surgeries carry risks.
This is the reason you need to see an experienced ES surgeon. Have you tried contacting Dr. De La Cure in NYC? He is very experienced. Dr. Samji did my surgeries. I trusted him to do a good job & he did. I’m living my life fully now that my styloids & stylohyoid ligaments are gone. My surgeries were in 2014 & 2015.
Surgery is never fun, but the alternative w/ ES - living w/ the symptoms & enduring them getting worse over time is not a better option in my mind. Whether or not to have surgery is a choice we each have to make.
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