Summary
Objectives
benign vocal fold lesions (BVFLs) represent the most common etiology of voice disorders
in paediatric population, cause of dysphonia by preventing full vocal fold closure
and modifying vibratory characteristics. Of those pathologies, vocal fold nodules
represent almost 63% of the cases in children between 0–14 years. Management may include
a combination of phonosurgery, voice therapy and pharmacological treatment, but almost
95% of otolaryngologists recommend voice therapy as primary treatment. The Pediatric
Voice Handicap Index (pVHI) is nowadays widely used and accepted in the evaluation
and monitoring of paediatric patients with dysphonia. The aim of our study was to
demonstrate the reliability and validity of PVHI in the evaluation of the effects
of voice therapy as treatment of vocal fold nodules in the paediatric population.
Patients and Method
in this retrospective chart review twenty-seven (27) dysphonic patients with bilateral
vocal fold nodules were treated with behavioral voice therapy approaches, and the
PVHI surveys was administered to each patient parent's before and after therapy. The
age of the patients ranged from 4 to 14 years (mean age 8.7 y-o); 17 (63%) were male
and 10 (37%) females.
Results
according to our results, behavioral voice therapy effectively improved pVHI scores
from pre- to post-treatment in paediatric patients with bilateral vocal fold nodules.
Key Words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: July 08, 2022
Accepted:
June 3,
2022
Publication stage
In Press Corrected ProofFootnotes
The study has not received funding from any organization or institution and does not involve any potential conflict of interest (financial and non-financial).
Identification
Copyright
© 2022 The Voice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
