Surgical treatment for a case of oculopharyngeal muscular dystrophy

Oculopharyngeal muscular dystrophy exhibits the symptoms of dysphagia and ptosis usually. We report a 34-year-old female case, with a chief complaint of hypernasality. And we decided to operate a surgical treatment because of very slow progression of this disease. To use the remained soft palate elevation effectively and to minimize the operative procedure, we employed a plastic operation of the pharyngeal posterior wall using the silicon block. After operation, the hypernasality was markedly improved and the veropharyngeal distance was reduced appropriately. So this method was considered as an effective treatment for the hypernasality. In this paper, the method is demonstrated and discussed bibliographically.