Joan Rivers had surprise throat biopsy that cut off her air supply, source claims

EXCLUSIVE: The late comedian went to Yorkville Endoscopy for a routine endoscopy on Aug. 28, but a doctor — who arrived with Rivers' entourage — offered to perform a biopsy after another doctor noticed 'something' on the entertainer's vocal chords, a medical source told the Daily News.

BY Don Kaplan
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Tuesday, September 9, 2014, 9:27 PM

The routine surgical procedure Joan Rivers was supposed to undergo turned deadly when a doctor who arrived at the clinic with the legendary comic’s entourage performed an unplanned biopsy on her vocal cords, a medical source who was briefed on the case told The News.

Such a procedure is not supposed to be performed outside of a hospital, according to medical experts.

The Aug. 28 biopsy at Yorkville Endoscopy, an E. 93rd St. clinic that usually only deals with digestive issues, caused Rivers' vocal chords to seize — a condition doctors call a laryngospasm — cutting off her air supply, the source said.

“A biopsy like that should only be done in a hospital setting,” the source said.

“If she had been in a hospital when it happened, she might have been okay,” the source said.

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More:
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment...ticle-1.1934178

Note: This fits with the initial story about respiratory arrest which could caused cardiac arrest.

IF this is what happened, I wonder why an emergency tracheotomy was not done. It would have bypassed the spasming vocal cords.



1 - Vocal folds
2 - Thyroid cartilage
3 - Cricoid cartilage
4 - Tracheal rings
5 - Balloon cuff

The vocal folds, also known commonly as vocal cords or voice reeds, are composed of twin infoldings of mucous membrane stretched horizontally, from back to front, across the larynx.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocal_folds