Summary
Introduction
The voice is an important marker of the transition process to the new gender identity
of the transgender person. For 20% of patients seeking voice feminization, voice therapy
is not completely satisfactory, and surgery should be considered, with endoscopic
glottoplasty being the current practice. While the increase in fundamental frequency
(F0) after glottoplasty has been well described, no systematic review of the literature
or meta-analysis regarding other acoustic parameters and quality of voice has been
performed yet.
Objective
To define the effect of endoscopic glottoplasty on acoustic measures and quality of
voice by assessing F0, maximum phonation time (MPT), frequency range, and grade of
dysphonia.
Methods
A literature review was performed in Medline/PubMed, Cochrane, Science Direct, LILACS,
and Google Scholar, following PRISMA guidelines, with no constraints on publication
date. We included studies in English, Portuguese or Spanish that assessed transgender
women who underwent endoscopic glottoplasty. All the included articles were measured
in terms of their methodological quality.
Results
The PRISMA approach yielded 14 studies, totaling 566 patients. There was significant
heterogeneity between studies regarding follow-up time, surgical technique and perioperative
care. Thirteen studies were submitted to meta-analysis. The results showed significant
changes in pre- to postglottoplasty mean differences of F0 = 78.49 Hz (95%CI: 75.69–81.30),
MPT = −1.11 seconds (95%CI −1.67 to −0.54), frequency range = −3.55 semitones (95%CI
−5.74 to −1.36) and grade of dysphonia on the GRBAS scale = 0.44 (95%CI 0.27–0.61).
Conclusion
Glottoplasty is effective in significantly increasing fundamental frequency, but slightly
decreases MPT, frequency range and vocal quality measured by the grade of dysphonia
on the GRBAS scale.
Key Words
Abbreviations:
VT (voice therapy), F0 (fundamental frequency), F1 (first formant), F2 (second formant), Hz (Hertz), VF (vocal fold), MPT (maximum phonation time), SD (standard deviation), CI (confidence interval), NOS (Newcastle-Ottawa Quality Assessment Adjusted Scale: Cohort Studies), VHI (Voice Handicap Index), TSEQ (Transgender Self-Evaluation Questionnaire), VAS (visual analog scale), PROM (patient-reported outcome measure), TVQMtF (Transgender Voice Questionnaire for Male-to-Female Transsexuals), NS (not stated or not extractable), IV (inverse variance)To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: December 01, 2020
Accepted:
November 12,
2020
Footnotes
Funding: None.
Conflict of Interest: None.
Identification
Copyright
© 2020 The Voice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
