• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.13-18
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• 2020

Background and Objective The purpose of this study is to report the effect of voice therapy using the voice reinforcement method (VRM) in patients with vocal nodules. It is one of the holistic voice therapy methods for improving vocal mechanisms. VRM includes not only direct and indirect voice therapy, but also trial therapy and self-practice. Composed of four stages: vocal hygiene education, relaxation, reinforcement, and generalization. Materials and Methods The subjects were 13 patients who were diagnosed with vocal nodules. Acoustic analysis, auditory perceptual assessment, K-VHI-10 and nodules size were compared before and after voice therapy. Voice therapy was conducted by speech-language pathologist and the mean number was 4.2. Results In acoustic analysis, Jitter, vF₀, vAm, Shimmer, NHR, and VTI were significantly decreased. F₀ was increased after voice therapy for women. 'Grade', 'Rough,' and 'Breathy' were significantly decreased in the GRBAS scale after voice therapy. In addition, K-VHI-10 and nodules size were significantly decreased. Conclusion VRM seems to be an effective voice therapy method in vocal nodules treatment. In VRM, especially, trial therapy is given motivation for vocal nodules treatments and self-practice has a continuous therapeutic effect in everyday life. VRM can be also applied to the voice therapy for other hyper-functional dysphonia.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.53-58
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• 2023

After thyroidectomy, some patients who show normal vocal cord movement still complain of subjective voice problems, which could lead to a decrease in quality of life related to communication. This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of a newly designed voice therapy applying neck exercise and semi-occluded vocal tract exercise (SOVTE) to improve voice problems after thyroidectomy without neurological injury. For this purpose, voice therapy was randomly assigned to 10 women who received thyroidectomy. Acoustic analysis [fundamental frequency, jitter, shimmer, noise-to-harmonics ratio, min Voice Range Profile (VRP), max VRP, VRP] was performed before and after surgery and immediately after voice therapy to compare voice changes. The study showed a statistically significant increase in max VRP and VRP after voice therapy compared to before surgery. These results suggest that the voice therapy methods in this study effectively improve a major symptom of voice problems after thyroidectomy, specifically the reduction in the high-frequency range. However, this study was limited in the number of s participants and did not control for the type of surgery. Therefore, further research utilizing larger sample sizes and controlled variables is needed to investigate the long-term effects of voice therapy.