Hoarseness in a Patient with Hydropneumothorax

Hoarseness is a general term used to describe any change in the quality of a person’s voice that may be due to various etiologies, including infection, malignancy, or neurologic disorders/dysfunction. The recurrent laryngeal nerve is responsible for providing motor function to the larynx and vocal cords, and any injury or compression of the nerve could cause a person to develop hoarseness of their voice. Here we present a case of a male patient with pneumothorax and the complaint of hoarseness, whose symptoms improved with resolution of the pneumothorax.