Tapia syndrome following anterior cervical surgery in a patient with diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis: a case report

Description

Liuxin Yan, Hongyang Gao, Zihao Zhen, and Zhiming Yu present a case report, published in 2025, of Tapia syndrome after neck surgery in a seventy-three-year-old man. The syndrome strikes two nerves together, those moving the tongue and the vocal cords, usually through airway handling during anaesthesia. His spine condition, a stiffening overgrowth of bone and ligament, made the front-of-neck operation anatomically tricky.

Surgery itself went smoothly, yet hoarseness followed, and his tongue later collapsed backward, blocking the airway. Scope examination cleared the vocal cords of direct injury, fitting the nerve diagnosis. The authors warn that such bone overgrowth raises airway nerve risk, and that teams should watch for delayed obstruction.

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Source: https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC12812916