Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, had surgery Thursday morning to remove a polyp on his vocal cord, CNN reported.
“He had general anesthesia and texted me after to let me know he was doing ok,” CNN‘s Sanjay Gupta, MD, tweeted. “Doctors have advised him to curtail his talking for a while to allow his vocal cords to recover.”
Gupta said vocal cord polyps typically form due to overuse. Singers, for instance, are more likely to develop them, he said.
As the nation’s top infectious disease expert and a member of the White House coronavirus task force, Fauci’s busy briefing schedule and frequent media appearances during the COVID-19 pandemic have required frequent speaking engagements.
He has faced questions about his gravelly voice in the past months. In April, NBC‘s Savannah Guthrie asked, “Are you OK? Your voice does not sound great.” He replied that he was “physically fine. All I do all day long is brief people. … I just need to keep my mouth shut for a little while.”
Around that time he also told the Economic Club of Washington, D.C.: “When you get your voice damaged a little, your trachea — I probably have a polyp there — that the only way you’re going to make it get better is to keep your mouth shut.”
Gupta said on CNN that Fauci has been wanting to address the polyp for the past few months and determined that now was the best time to get it done.
“The advice is going to be, ‘Don’t talk for a while,'” Gupta said. “That’s how you recover from this surgery.”
Source: MedicalNewsToday.com
