Effect of mobile-based voice therapy on the voice quality of patients with dysphonia

Abstract

Mobile-based voice therapy (MBVT) has the advantage of being cheaper and more flexible for patients and clinicians compared to traditional PC-based voice therapy. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of MBVT on the voice quality of patients with dysphonia.Methods: Forty-five patients with benign vocal fold lesions were randomly allocated to either the experimental (N = 25) or control (N = 20) group. The experimental group received MBVT, while the control group received traditional voice therapy (TRVT). Both groups participated in 40 minutes of the intervention per session, once per week, for 8 weeks. Voice evaluation measures included cepstral analysis, acoustic voice quality index, acoustic breathiness index, auditory-perceptual ratings, and a self-rated questionnaire. Analyses compared the voice quality and subjective variables before and after each therapy, as well as between each type of therapy (MBVT vs. TRVT). Results:The results showed that voice quality and patient satisfaction improved in both therapies compared to before therapy, indicating recovery (p < 0.01). Therefore, similar to TRVT, MBVT was effective for voice rehabilitation.Conclusions: MBVT could have a positive effect on voice recovery for patients with dysphonia. Therefore, the mobile-based approach is useful to restore pathological voice and allows for a greater number of patients to easily access voice therapy.

Pareto-Optimized AVQI Assessment of Dysphonia: A Clinical Trial Using Various Smartphones

“…Compared to conventional PCbased voice treatment, smartphone voice therapy is less expensive and more flexible for patients and doctors. According to [12], voice quality and patient satisfaction increased in both therapies compared to before therapy, showing recovery. Others discovered that AVQI measures obtained from smartphone microphone voice recordings with experimentally added ambient noise disclosed an amicable settlement with the results of oral microphone recordings, implying that smartphone microphone recordings conducted, even with the existence of acceptable ambient noise, are suitable for estimating AVQI [13].…”