Objective. The aim was to investigate the efficacy of the Proprioceptive Elastic Method (PROEL) in the rehabilitation of the substitution voice after open partial horizontal laryngectomy (OPHL). Study Design. Prospective outcome study.Methods. 15 patients surgically treated by OPHL type II or type III for laryngeal cancer were recruited (experimental group). Each patient underwent a specific program of voice rehabilitation based on the PROEL method with the same speech and language pathologist. Acoustic-aerodynamic analysis: maximum phonation time (MPT); spectrographic classification (Titze's modified classification), perceptual analysis (INFVo rating scale) and self assessments (SECEL questionnaire) were performed before the treatment (T0), after three months of rehabilitation (T1), and at the end of the 6-month rehabilitation program (T2).A control sample of other 15 patients who underwent OPHL type II or type III and who underwent a standard peri-operative rehabilitation was randomly extracted from an historical database and compared to the experimental group. Results.Significative voice improvements between T0-T1 and T2 were found for acoustic, aerodynamic, perceptual and self assessments analysis in the experimental group. Significative differences were found between the experimental group at T2 and the control sample for aerodynamic, self assessment and perceptual analysis. Conclusions.The results of the present study support PROEL method as an effective approach for substitution voice rehabilitation after OPHL type II and III. Randomized-controlled trials on larger groups of patients are needed in future in order to compare PROEL with other rehabilitative approaches.

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