Ultrastructural study of muscle in vocal fold: postmortem damage observations

Various authors have published results related to the ultrastructure of vocal folds in specific areas proceeding from human cadavers. Nevertheless, starting from the premise that a fundamental principle of sampling and the samples should be a true representative of the whole, the authors decided to examine vocal folds from human cadavers and compare them to normal vocal folds from the guinea pig (Cavia porcellus). The findings of these authors demonstrated clearly that the conclusion of Rhodin (1954) is correct, that a biological sample must be preserved immediately after blood circulation ceases, and that the intermediary time between biopsy and fixation cannot be more than 3 minutes. Cells fixed a few hours after death appeared disaggregated, and many of their endocellular components were profoundly altered. The results obtained by the authors suggests that ultrastructural studies with cadaverous material may lead to serious risks or doubts about the accuracy of the results and consequently result in dubious interpretations.