Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
12th ESLA Congress, Bruges, Belçika, 26 - 28 Eylül 2024, ss.10
Background: Dysphonia directly affects a person's communication. This can cause a person's quality of life to deteriorate. Therefore, the evaluation of dysphonia should include patients' problems with their daily voice-related life.
Aims: To examine perceptions of voice-related quality of life in patients with vocal nodules(VN), muscle tension dysphonia(MTD) and unilateral vocal cord paralysis(UVFP).
Methods: Participants aged 18 to 75 were included in the study group(n=44). The study group was studied in 3 subgroups(Group 1:VN (n=15), Group 2:MTD (n =15), and Group 3: UVFP (N=14)). The normophone group included 44 participants matched by age and sex without voice complaints(Grup 4). The participants' voice disturbance was diagnosed by an ear nasal throat specialist and a speech and language therapist with more than 10 years of experience in the field of voice. All participants were asked to complete the Turkish version of the Voice-Related Quality of Life(VRQOL) survey. The group comparisons were made using the Mann Whitney-U and Kruskall Wallis tests.
Results: The average age of participants is as follows: Group 1=37.3(±15,67); Group 2=44.33(±19,81); Group 3=40.43(±16,81); Group 4=40.70 (±17,37). The study group had a lower survey score than the normophone group(p<0,001). The female participants scored lower than the male, regardless of the diagnosis subgroup. Compared to the diagnosed subgroup of patients in the study group, the survey scores of the group 3 were statistically significantly lower than in the other two groups(p=0,03).
Conclusions: The results clearly show that V-RQOL scores are lower in the study group. Female participants achieving lower scores showed poorer voice status. It indicates that women tend to perceive dysphonia, especially its social-emotional effects, more. Lower survey scores in the group 3 may be associated with a poorer voice status. The fact that this group suffered from glottal insufficiency in particular may have affected their VRQOL.