الفهرس 
IntroductionOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
Abstract
Benign vocal fold lesions have important public health implications. Treatment can be a speech therapy with correction of breath and posture and, in some cases, a surgical treatment. Since the introduction of endolaryngeal microsurgery, several basic microsurgical techniques have been described for the removal of benign vocal fold lesions. There has not been much data with CO2 lasers for such lesions. It is generally accepted that CO2 lasers can be used safely in the larynx to remove benign superficial laryngeal lesions.
In this context, the present study aimed to search for evidence comparing surgical outcome after use of conventional microsurgery or CO2 laser assisted phonosurgery for benign vocal fold lesions.
In the present review, patients sex were reported in 11 studies including 924 patients. The reported lesions were polyps in 391 patients (39.7 %), nodules in 102 patients (10.3 %), cysts in 196 patients (19.9 %), Reinke edema in 70 patients (7.1 %) and other lesions in 179 patients (18.2 %).
In the present study, the studied intervention was cold microlaryngeal surgery in 7 studies. In all of these studies, treatment resulted in significant clinical improvement. Also, in the 4 studies using CO2 laser, significant clinical progress was achieved after treatment. In the only retrospective study that compared conventional surgery and CO2 assisted surgery, results of both interventions were comparable.
After implementation of the exclusion criteria stated by the study protocol, only three randomized studies remained for analysis. However, these studies comprised patients with heterogenous vocal fold lesions and used different parameters to assess treatment outcome at different follow up intervals. These factors disallowed performing meta-analysis of the conclusions of these studies.