Differences Between Female Singers With Phonotrauma and Vocally Healthy Matched Controls in Singing and Speaking Voice Use During 1 Week of Ambulatory Monitoring.
Laura E Toles, Andrew J Ortiz, Katherine L Marks and 5 others
PMID 33472007WHAT IT FOUND
Singers with vocal fold lesions spoke significantly more than healthy singers during a typical week, but did not sing more.
This suggests that excessive talking, not just singing, may contribute to voice trauma in this population.
Key findings
01Patients with phonotrauma had significantly higher vocal doses for speaking (phonation time, cycle dose, distance dose) compared to controls, but differences in singing did not reach significance.
02Voice quality measures showed patients had lower average H1-H2 values and a more negatively skewed SPL distribution, indicating more abrupt glottal closure and potentially higher laryngeal forces.
03There were no significant differences between groups in fundamental frequency (f0) or Cepstral Peak Prominence (CPP) distributions.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study was cross-sectional, so it cannot determine if high speaking voice use caused the lesions or if patients with lesions simply talk more. Participants were monitored after diagnosis, meaning their behavior might have been influenced by knowing they had a voice problem. The automated singing classifier had some misclassification rates, particularly for speech that sounded 'singsong-like', which required removing some data and re-matching participants.
Declared interests
Funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIH). The authors declare no other conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that singing is the primary driver of voice trauma in these patients. The study found no significant difference in singing dose between groups, but did find significantly higher speaking dose in patients.