Effectiveness of Two Therapeutic Approaches in Female Teachers With Voice Disorders

Federal University of São Paulo

Status: Completed

Conditions: Voice Disorders

Treatments: Behavioral: Voice Amplification; Behavioral: Function Voice Exercises

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT01196611

ETIC 0521.0.203.000-09

Details and patient eligibility

About

The study compares two different approaches of voice therapy. Vocal Functional Exercises (Stemple,1997) and Voice Amplification using a portable amplifier (Tsi Supervoz II - Tecnisystem do Brasil TSI 1210).

Full description

Both approaches combined with Vocal Hygiene Program (Behlau, 2007).The target population are female teachers because they have the highest risk for developing voice problems. For this study the investigators are primarily interested in seeing if Vocal Functional Exercises and Voice Amplification are equally effective at improving vocal functioning in teachers with voice disorders. The Fiberoptic endoscopic evaluation will be done before randomization. All the participants will complete before and after a 6-week treatment phase (a) Voice Activity and Participation Profile (PPAV), an instrument designed to appraise the self-perceived psychosocial consequences of voice disorders to assess the impact of voice disorders on daily activities (b) Audio voice recording for later acoustic analysis, through the Kay Elemetrics Multi Dimensional Voice Program (c) Audio recording for later perceptual analysis through Consensus Auditory-Perceptual Evaluation of Voice (CAPE_V). It is believed that the search for evidence in clinical studies like this can contribute to awareness programs and vocal training for teachers.

Enrollment: 162 patients

Sex: Female

Ages: 21 to 50 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Female teacher
• 21-50 years old.
• Full or part time elementary to middle school teacher ( Prefeitura Municipal de Belo Horizonte).
• Minimum 20 hour weekly workload.
• Medical reference to speech therapy due to behavioral dysphonia

Exclusion criteria

• Physical education or daycare teachers.
• Professional singers.
• Neurological and/or psychiatric voice disorders

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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162 participants in 2 patient groups

Function Voice Exercises

Experimental group

Description:

Behavioral: Function Voice Exercises Patients will receive 6 sessions of therapy over a course of 6 weeks, with one session per week.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Function Voice Exercises

Voice amplification

Experimental group

Description:

Behavioral: Voice amplification Patients will use VA over a course of 6 weeks.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Voice Amplification