Changes in Acoustic Parameters of Voice After Endoscopic Sinus Surgery in Patients with Nasal Polyposis

Abstract

Our aim was to evaluate acoustic voice analysis of patients diagnosed with nasal polyps before and after endoscopic sinus surgery. Forty-three patients diagnosed with nasal polyposis who had undergone endoscopic sinus surgery were included in this prospective study. Patients were divided into three groups according to the stage of nasal obstruction before the surgery. Acoustic voice analyses were performed on each patient before the endoscopic sinus surgery and six weeks following the surgery with the multi-dimensional voice program. Jitter, shimmer, F0 frequency, and noise to harmonic ratio (NHR) parameters were obtained for acoustic analysis. Our investigation showed that Jitter, shimmer and NHR values decreased, and F0 value increased in the postoperative period in patients that had a partial nasal obstruction before the surgery. Non-significant increases were also observed in these four parameters after the surgery in cases with total or near-total nasal obstruction. We also found that the postoperative changes in shimmer values between the Stage III patients and the patients in other stages were statistically significant (P = 0.027). Voice changes that became more marked with increasing stages of the nasal polyposis. According to our results, patients should be informed of the possible alterations in speech following major surgical interventions on the paranasal sinuses.

Effects of Nasal Obstruction due to Nasal Polyposis on Nasal Resonance and Voice Perception

“…The nasal cavity and the paranasal sinuses are regions contributing to resonance, and any anatomic diversity in these areas may contribute to supralaryngeal resonance which can affect voice quality. Voice complaints originate particularly from the larynx, and nasal obstruction does not cause a significant change in the larynx-induced acoustic character of the voice [7]. However, the resonator region, being so variable in shape and width, may change nasal resonance [8,9].…”

“…In our study, a 3-month recovery period was sufficient to demonstrate changes in nasalance. Patients with total obstruction can show changes in voice measurements as well as nasalance [7]. All patients included in our study had total nasal obstruction, so we were unable to assess preoperatively if any correlation existed between the nasal obstruction severity and the VHI score.…”

Voice outcomes after endoscopic sinus surgery in patients with chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyposis

“…Acoustic analysis of voice is a common technique to objectively measure voice. Acoustic voice analysis generally refers to a family of computer‐based techniques that measure acoustic signal properties of a vowel or speech . Acar et al prospectively looked at patients with CRSwNP following ESS.…”

“…Acoustic voice analysis generally refers to a family of computer-based techniques that measure acoustic signal properties of a vowel or speech. 14 Acar et al prospectively looked at patients with CRSwNP following ESS. They performed acoustic voice analyses on 43 patients subdivided into three groups based on severity of nasal polyposis before and 6 weeks after surgery.…”

Selection of Optimum Mother Wavelet Function for Turkish Phonemes

“…The analysis is based on objective parameters which are fundamental frequency, pitch perturbation (jitter) and amplitude perturbation (shimmer) and the analysis can be easily repeated [4]. In recent years, the acoustic analysis parameters are commonly used in the evaluation of medical and surgical outcomes [5], speaker and speech recognition [6], speech analysis and synthesis, linguistic and phonetic knowledge acquisition [7], diagnosis of sound diseases [8], and planning of treatment and monitoring of treatment processes [9]. Wavelet transform which is a multi-resolution analysis technique is one of the most widely used methods in the acoustic analysis [10].…”