Perceptual Assessment of the Tracheoesophageal Voice

Institute of Hospitalization and Scientific Care (IRCCS)

Status: Completed

Conditions: Tracheo-Esophageal Fistula Following Tracheostomy

Treatments: Other: voice recording; Other: perceptual assessment of the recorded voice sample

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT05754671

3554

Details and patient eligibility

About

Aim of this study was to validate the Sunderland Tracheoesophageal Perceptual Scale (SToPS) in Italian language by checking the inter- and intra-rater reliability.

The validation of the tool involved the following steps: 1) Translation and adaptation of the SToPS into Italian language; 2) Recruitment of participants (43 laryngectomized patients with a voice prosthesis and 12 health professionals - 6 speech and language therapists (SLTs) and 6 Ear, Nose, and Throat (ENTs) surgeons - classified into experienced or not at assessing voice; 3) Recording of patients' speech samples; 4) Perceptual evaluation of recorded speech samples (test and re-test) performed by the 12 health professionals; 5) Statistical analysis (quadratic weighted Cohen Kappa and weighted Kappa of Light coefficients).

SLTs with specific experience in tracheo-esophageal and laryngeal voice rated more reliably than the others raters. For all groups of raters, the inter-rater agreement was worse than the intra-rater one for 9/10 parameters. Exclusively for experienced SLTs, only the "Impairment of social acceptability" parameter reached a good level of inter-rater agreement.

In conclusion, the Italian version of SToPS can be considered a reliable tool. As in the original version, expert SLTs may be considered the optimal judges for tracheoesophageal voice assessment.

Enrollment: 55 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• native Italian speakers;
• ability to produce TE voice.

Exclusion criteria

• reading difficulties;
• presence or suspicion of disease recurrence;
• other communication problems not related to Total laryngectomy.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Diagnostic

Allocation: Non-Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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55 participants in 2 patient groups

laryngectomized patients

Experimental group

Treatment:

Other: voice recording

health professionals

Experimental group

Treatment:

Other: perceptual assessment of the recorded voice sample