Adele's Voice-Saving Doctor Shares His Story
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MIAMI (CBSMiami) -- From her chart-topping vocals, to the queen of karaoke with James Corden, to the cover of Rolling Stone, Adele has taken the world over with her soulful sound.
She had it all until it all went silent, not once but twice. By late October 2011, her voice was gone as she told Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes.
"Yeah I had laser surgery," said Adele.
They put a laser down her throat, cut out a polyp and lasered it back together.
The fix it man was Dr. Steven Zeitels, Director of the Mass General Voice Center. He specializes in voice restoration. His job was to remove the polyp on her vocal chord that had hemorrhaged.
"It was a benign problem. The laser technology is called a KTP or Green Light Laser is exactly the technology I used with Steven, Steven Tyler. It's a wonderful technology," said Dr. Zeitels.
The strategy for that is remove the mass which is benign and that is done with hand instruments and then one seals the blood vessel off with a KTP laser referred to as a Green Light Laser," said Dr. Zeitels. "I've used this for Steven Tyler, Sam Smith, Keith Urban, Lionel Richie…It's very effective."
The doctor says singing while she was sick and overuse may have played a role in what happened. To heal, Adele wasn't supposed to speak.
"Yea I love talking," said Adele who had to communicate by pad for five weeks. "I typed the words in and it speaks for you but the great thing is I find one that can swear getting my point across."
Dr. Zeitels has worked with many superstars like Sam Smith this past year who called him his angel and got him back on tour. He also worked with Julie Andrews, Cher, and The Who's Roger Daltrey.
Daltrey spoke about his own vocal surgery, that happened weeks before he performed at the Superbowl in 2010.
When asked to go back to that feeling when he realized his voice was going, he said, "If I woke up from the operation and lose a vocal chord from this big nasty one I'd have to roll with it again but afterward when I had the silence...woooooooh."
The superstars, are just a small number of the patients the doctor treats. Most he says are simply every day losing their voices from overuse.
"Things that happened to Adele happen every day to school teachers, coaches, it may be the parents of the kids who are rooting at the game. This is so common," said Dr. Zeitels.
The promising news is with high tech procedures, most voice loss is repairable, just like in Adele's case. As for her, Dr. Zeitels says, "from my view, she's basically back to normal. It is possible to have a second injury but I can't promise nothing will ever happen again. It's like competitive sports but I think she's well positioned to have a long and successful career."
