Laryngoscopy And Voice Assessments Of Marketing Personnel Patients With Dysphonia

ObjectiveTo observe the laryngoscopic characteristics and the results of the subjective andobjective voice assessments of marketing personnel patients with dysphonia andcompare with teacher patients, to analyze the effect of occupational voice use onvoice function, and to discuss the value of subjective voice assessments and acousticanalysis in evaluating the voice damage degree and the property of vocal cordsdisorders of occupational patients with dysphonia.Methods80marketing patients,60teacher patients and60healthy adults in thedepartment of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology Clinic from July2011to December2012wereselected. Teacher and marketing patients with dysphonia were examined by rigidmagnifying laryngoscope or electronic laryngoscope, and tested by the simplifiedChinese version of voice handicap index (VHI-13) and GRBAS perceptual evaluation,Xion acoustic analysis software was used to measure the sustained vowel signals ofthe three groups. Then the acoustic parameters (SPLmin, jitter, F0max, shimmer,maximum phonation time [MPT] and dysphonic severity index [DSI]) were obtained.The differences of laryngoscopy and voice subjective assessments between marketingpatients and teacher patients, voice acoustic analysis among marketing patients,teacher patients and normal controls, voice acoustic parameters in various vocallesions of marketing patients were compared, and the association of acousticparameters with subjective assessment indicators of marketing patients was analyzed.ResultsThe laryngoscopy of marketing and teacher patients mainly presented chroniclaryngitis (35%), vocal nodule (35%) and vocal polyp (30%). There were nostatistical differences in the constituent ratio of vocal cord lesions between the two groups (P>0.05). The total VHI score of marketing patients was increased, the totalhoarse degrees (G) mainly showed mild to moderate abnormalities, there were nostatistical differences in subjective voice assessment between marketing and teachergroups (P>0.05). The means of jitter and shimmer of marketing and teachers patientswere significantly higher than those of normal controls respectively and the means ofMPT and DSI were significantly lower (P<0.01), though there were no statisticallydifferences of voice parameters between two patient groups (P>0.05). The differencesof acoustic parameters (jitter, shimmer, MPT, DSI) in different G groups of marketingpatients was statically significant (P<0.01, P<0.05), there existed some differences inG and acoustic parameters among different vocal fold lesions of marketing patients(P<0.05).The acoustic parameters of marketing patients were noticeably associatedwith the score on Grade (P<0.01) and not correlated with the VHI (P>0.05).ConclusionThe long-term occupational use of voice is easy to cause benign lesions ofvocal cords, mainly female in the patients. The subjective and objective assessmentsof voice showed the voice function of patients was mild to moderate abnormal. TheVHI reflects the scope and extent of influence of voice disorders on patients’ lives,and the voice acoustic analysis and subjective perceptual evaluation can assess theseverity of voice damage quantitatively and the property of vocal cords disorders.Therefore, combination of the three methods will be helpful in evaluating thefunction of voice for occupational patients with dysphonia.