The Syllable Method: Proportion of Impaired Syllables as an Indicator of Spasmodic Dysphonia Severity

Abstract

We have previously proposed the ‘mora method’ to evaluate the degree of impairment in spasmodic dysphonia (SD) in Japanese-speaking patients. With this method, impairment is judged as the proportion of impaired morae in a 25-mora sentence in a longer passage read aloud. As the mora is the phonologically isochronic unit in Japanese, the proportion of impaired morae in speech can be used to represent the temporal proportion of impaired Japanese speech. This proportional measure of impairment reflects the perceived severity of the impairment, and is a more reliable measure than a 4-point perceptual rating scale completed either by patients or by voice professionals. In this paper, we propose a ‘syllable method’ to characterize the severity of impairment in English-speaking SD patients. Instead of morae, the severity of SD was represented by the proportion of impaired syllables. It should be possible to characterize SD impairments more reliably and precisely with this method than using a 4-point rating scale completed by voice professionals. Ultimately, the syllable method should become a simple and effective method for evaluating the severity of SD. Furthermore, such methods can be applied to other languages, using the appropriate phonological unit (either mora or syllable).

Surgical treatment for adductor spasmodic dysphonia – efficacy of bilateral thyroarytenoid myectomy under microlaryngoscopy

“…The surgical procedure is simple because of the approach under microlaryngoscopy, cervical incision is not necessary with this method, and it is esthetically excellent. In Europe and the USA, the proportion of male patients to that of female patients is generally believed to be the same, whereas the proportion of female patients is high in reports from Japan [5]. This point seems to be an advantage of our method, which merits special mention.…”

“…The postoperative voice was evaluated by the GRBAS scale and the mora method [5]. The spasmodic voice improved immediately after the operation, but all seven patients had a breathy voice of G(2)R(1)B(1Á2)A(0)S(2).…”

“…We chose to use the mora as our basic unit with Japanese-speaking patients because the mora is the phonologically isochronic unit in Japanese, and the proportion of impaired morae in speech represents the temporal proportion of the impairment of speech. With this method, we evaluate the severity of ADSD for running speech in 24 mora sentences [5]. Table III shows the changes in the preoperative and postoperative spasmodic ratio: spasmodic mora/24 mora (%).…”

“…These results express problems with BT injection in Japan, under current conditions. Kumada et al [5]. described there being a limit to continuing implementation of BT injection only at the restricted institutes in Japan and noted that other institutes need to participate in the implementation of BT injection to reach a saturation point in the future.…”

Botulinum Toxin Therapy for Spasmodic Dysphonia in Japan: The History and an Update

“…The mean interval between the therapies was 3.1 ± 0.7 months. The group developed the objective mora method to assess treatment effectiveness [ 44 , 45 ]. A mora is the minimal sound unit of Japanese words (corresponding to an English syllable).…”