Wilson to Undergo Minor Throat Surgery

Gov. Pete Wilson is scheduled to undergo outpatient surgery today in Los Angeles to remove a nodule from his vocal cords that doctors attributed to his many political speeches and portrayed as more bothersome than dangerous.

Dr. Gerald Berke, the director of head and neck surgery at UCLA Medical Center who will perform the operation, said that if it were not for the governor’s profession, he probably would not need the nodule removed.

Berke and other medical experts said there is almost no chance that the nodule is malignant, although a biopsy will be performed on the tissue as a standard procedure.

“It is quite common in professional voice users, many times in singers as well,” Berke said Thursday in a conference call with reporters. “A good analogy is a callus. Because he uses his voice so extensively, the callus has become larger and it is causing more problems than it was earlier on.”

Berke said the governor has probably had the nodule for several years, but he only recently reported discomfort. Lately, the condition has caused Wilson’s voice to crack during speeches and has caused hoarseness and frequent irritation that the governor has soothed with cough drops.

The condition has done little to slow the governor’s schedule. Wilson gave a speech Thursday morning to a group of business professionals in Sacramento and he spent much of the day making phone calls to raise money for his presidential campaign.

Berke said Wilson will need a few days rest after the surgery, but he said he could be giving speeches again within a week. Berke said the surgery is low risk with the greatest threat being from the general anesthesia the governor will receive for about 30 minutes.

“I don’t think there are really many risks involved,” Berke said. “The main risk is in anesthesia and it really is one in 10,000.”

Medical experts said there is also a risk during surgery that the vocal cords could be damaged and the condition made worse. But they said that chance is slim.

“The risk of surgery is that there would be some permanent vocal cord damage,” said Dr. David M. Alessi, an otolaryngologist affiliated with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center who specializes in the treatment of singers with voice problems. “In good hands, however, that risk is very rare.”

Alessi and other doctors agreed that the condition is common and that there is a minimal risk of malignancy in a nonsmoker.

Wilson occasionally smokes cigars, but Berke said it is not likely to have caused the problem and he will not recommend that the governor give up smoking them.

Leslie Goodman, the governor’s communications director, said Wilson was given an excellent health report after a physical within the last year at UC Davis Medical Center. The governor underwent an emergency appendectomy in 1985, she said.

At that time, Wilson gained national attention when he was wheeled onto the Senate floor one day after surgery to cast a key vote on President Ronald Reagan’s 1986 budget.

Berke said Wilson should recover fully and that his voice should not change because of the procedure. The governor may be told to practice voice therapy to prevent the condition from occurring again, Berke said.

“If you tend to do the same bad habits over and over again, it tends to recur,” said Dr. Martin Zane, governor of the Academy of Otolaryngology in Los Angeles. “You cause this by trying to put energy in the airstream at the voice box instead of putting energy into the airstream at the diaphragm. . . . This occurs very commonly in preachers, singers, teachers, people who are doing a lot of talking.”

Times staff writer Shari Roan contributed to this story.