Transoral laser microsurgery is the recommended treatment for early glottic cancers.

Medical terminology frequently mistakes the instrument for the surgical procedure: endoscopic excision of laryngeal cancers existed long before laser came into use. Lasing obeys the same rules as those of suspension laryngoscopy: if adequate laryngeal exposure is not attained, then the procedure is at risk of being incomplete and of providing few satisfactory results. Because a certain degree of literary anarchy exists in terms of definitions for the different cordectomy types, the Nomenclature Committee of the European Laryngological Society has proposed a classification. This categorization is a synthesis and a compromise between members of the Society who had developed and used, for several years, a personal classification. The proposed classification has two aims: to better understand each surgeon's technique in function of the tumoral extent; and to compare more rigorously the postoperative results. This classification includes the following procedures: Subepithelial cordectomy or decortication (Type I); Subligamentous cordectomy (Type II); Transmuscular cordectomy (Type III); Total or complete cordectomy (Type IV); Extended cordectomy encompassing the contralateral vocal fold (Type Va); encompassing the arytenoid (Type Vb); encompassing the ventricular fold (Type Vc); encompassing the subglottis (1 cm) (Type Vd).