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Social withdrawal after laryngectomy

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Abstract

This investigation focuses on the psychosocial concomitants of a laryngectomy. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 218 laryngectomized patients. Standardised questionnaires were used to assess patients’ social activity (FPAL, EORTC QLQ-C30), intelligibility of speech (PLTT, FPAL), mental well-being (HADS), and perceived stigmatisation (FPAL). More than 40% of the patients withdrew from conversation. Only one-third of all patients regularly took part in social activities. About 87% perceived stigmatisation because of their changed voice and more than 50% felt embarrassed because of their tracheostoma. Almost one-third of the patients had increased anxiety and depression scores. Moderate objective speech intelligibility was found, though patients were not particularly satisfied with their voice. Social activity emerged to be independent from age, gender, treatment variables, and stage of disease. Multivariate analysis resulted in two independent factors representing two patterns of social withdrawal. On the one hand, there was withdrawal from conversation accompanied by increased depression and poor speech intelligibility. On the other hand, there were reduced social activities accompanied by increased anxiety and perceived stigmatisation.

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Acknowledgment

The project was financed with a grant from the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (# 7DZAIQTX).

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Independent Department of Medical Psychology and Medical Sociology, University of Leipzig, Philipp-Rosenthal-Straße 55, 04103, Leipzig, Germany

    Helge Danker, Dorit Wollbrück, Susanne Singer, Elmar Brähler & Alexandra Meyer

  2. Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Section of Phoniatrics and Audiology, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany

    Michael Fuchs

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  1. Helge Danker
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  2. Dorit Wollbrück
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Correspondence to Helge Danker.

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Danker, H., Wollbrück, D., Singer, S. et al. Social withdrawal after laryngectomy. Eur Arch Otorhinolaryngol 267, 593–600 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00405-009-1087-4

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