RESTORATION of the pharynx after pharyngolaryngectomy is one of the major problems of head and neck surgery. Many methods have been described; these fall mostly into two types—those using skin flaps and those using a transposed viscus.
Repair by skin flaps1-4 suffers from two disadvantages: the patient often dies of recurrent disease before the repair is complete, and, even if the repair is completed, the result is often unsatisfactory because of fistula or stricture formation. For this reason many surgeons have attempted to replace the pharynx by another viscus.
The viscera used for pharyngeal replacement include stomach,5 colon,6 and jejunum.7 This paper describes my experience using stomach.
Material and Methods
Nineteen patients undergoing pharyngolaryngo-esophagectomy and stomach transplant between January 1968 and March 1969 are described. Three of these had previously been irradiated. Five patients had a simultaneous block dissection, on both sides of the neck in