Wilson Has Minor Outpatient Surgery on His Vocal Cords

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Pete Wilson underwent minor outpatient surgery for a persistent throat condition Friday for which he was first treated more than a year ago and which contributed to his failed presidential bid.

A doctor at UCLA Medical Center performed the procedure to correct the occasional cracking of the governor’s voice that has remained with him since his throat surgery in April 1995, the physician and a press aide reported.

The treatment Friday, performed under local anesthetic, lasted less than an hour. Wilson is expected to return to a full work schedule Monday, press secretary Sean Walsh said.

The purpose of the procedure was to “improve the apposition” of the governor’s vocal cords--that is, bring them closer together--said Dr. Gerald S. Berke, chief of UCLA Medical Center’s division of head and neck surgery.

In an interview in May, Wilson described how, if the vocal cords are not of equal mass and fail to open and close completely during speech, the voice tends to crack.

By moving the cords closer together, the speech glitch--an embarrassing irritant for a politician--is supposed to be eliminated.

“The procedure went according to plan,” said Berke, who performed the original surgery and conducted periodic follow-up examinations. He said Wilson’s throat and vocal cords “have recovered nicely” from the 1995 operation.

That surgery was undertaken to remove a benign nodule on one of the governor’s vocal cords. The nodule was removed successfully. But because Wilson kept up an active speaking schedule, failing to rest his throat as prescribed, he lost the effective use of his voice almost entirely for nearly three months.

“Don’t worry,” Wilson joked later. “It doesn’t hurt me. It only hurts my listeners.”

The condition harmed his presidential bid then getting under way, preventing him from keeping speaking engagements or making personal pitches for campaign funds.

Wilson campaigned for several months, formally announcing in August that he was seeking the Republican presidential nomination. A month later, he announced he was abandoning the campaign.

Since then, Walsh said, the governor has undergone voice therapy that “has not come along quite as nicely as we had hoped.”

The demands of the job have prevented regular therapy sessions, he said, and the vocal cords are often under the kind of strain that “99% of the population doesn’t have.”

Two months ago, Walsh said, Berke recommended that Wilson consider the treatment that the governor received Friday.