The intraneural topography of the recurrent laryngeal nerve in man

✍ Scribed by Sunderland, S. ;Swaney, W. E.

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1952
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 809 KB
• Volume: 114
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0003-276X
• DOI: 10.1002/ar.1091140303

✦ Synopsis

T W O FIGURES

The investigations of Semon (1881Semon ( , 1883) ) and those carried out independently by Rosenbach (1880, 1884, 1885) were the basis of claims that "the abductors of the vocal cords are more easily disabled by any organic mischief acting upon their nerve supply than the adductors. " This clinical observation apparently gained rapid and general acceptance for within 4 years Gottstein (1884) wrote that the vulnerability of the abductor fibers mas a fact upon which all observers were agreed. This was, however, subsequently denied by Hooper (1885) and more recently others have also had occasion to criticize this generalization (Icing and Gregg, '48 ; Armstrong and Hinton, '51). In contradistinction we have a recent statement that "there is no reason to doubt the truth of Semon's Law, in spite of some criticisms of its accuracy" (Negus, '47). Assuming that under certain conditions the abductor fibers fail before the adductor it is of interest to determine why this should be so.

MacKenzie (1880) suggested that the abductor fibers might be more superficially and circumferentially arranged in the recurrent laryngeal nerve than the adductor fibers and were therefore more prone to compression injuries. Subsequent work did not support this hypothesis (Risien Russell, 1892).