Successful tracheoesophageal puncture voice restoration in a patient with total glossectomy.

S i n c e tracheoesophageal puncture (TEP) was introduced in 1980,1 this technique has been widely used to restore the voice after total laryngectomy. After TER speech has been found to be more intelligible and natura l -sounding than e lec t rolaryngeal or esophageal speech.2,3 TEP speech uses pulmonary air to generate sound, which results in greater volume and more words per breath than esophageal speech.4 The success of any alaryngeal speech method largely depends on the patient 's abili ty to articulate speech from whatever sound source is used. For this reason TEP would seem to be ineffective in patients who have undergone total glossectomy. We present the case of a patient with total laryngectomy and total g lossecmmy who underwent TEP and was subsequently able to produce intell igible speech to achieve a functional level of communication.