The consistent use of indwelling voice prostheses shows a high success rate of prosthetic vocal rehabilitation, in terms of the percentage of long-term users (95%), and of a fair-to-excellent voice quality (88% of patients).

These findings underline the necessity to develop and use more specific additional questionnaires as an adjunct to the existing EORTC questionnaires, when studying specific symptoms in laryngectomized individuals, especially in order to detect intervention related changes over time.

Introduction. The objective was to gain insight into the relationship between tracheoesophageal voice quality and anatomical and morphological characteristics of the neoglottis, using perceptual evaluation of voice quality (good/reasonable/poor) and an evaluation protocol for videofluoroscopy recordings of the neoglottis (visual assessment and quantitative measures on digitized images).1 Methods. Thirty‐nine laryngectomized patients (nine also underwent pharyngeal and/or oesophageal reconstruction) (29 men and 10 women, aged 47–82 years, mean 67) were studied. Perceptual evaluations were performed on read‐aloud text; evaluation of videofluoroscopy recordings was undertaken at rest and during phonation. Results. Voice quality is related to tonicity of the neoglottis and appearance of a neoglottic bar during phonation. In a ‘good’ voice, there is always a visible neoglottic bar and never hypotonicity. Furthermore, voice quality is related to the ratio maximal subneoglottic distance at rest/during phonation (larger in ‘good’ speakers), minimal distance during phonation and minimal distance at rest (smaller in ‘good’ speakers). Conclusion. Anatomical and morphological characteristics of the neoglottis are related to tracheoesophageal voice quality. The quantitative measures enable more standardized evaluation of neoglottic characteristics.

After 6 months, 19% of patients used the new ASV on a daily basis (mean 5 h/day), while 57% used it on an irregular basis as an additional rehabilitation tool for special occasions. Two-thirds of the study group indicated that they would continue to use the new ASV after the study period. With respect to the objective parameters, statistically significantly better maximum phonation times and dynamic loudness ranges were observed with the new ASV compared to the Blom-Singer ASV. However, the best results for all the objective parameters were obtained with digital occlusion via the Provox HME.