Outcomes of Voice Therapy in Behavioral Voice Disorders: A Scoping Review-Part A.
Vanessa Veis Ribeiro, Karen Maria de Paula, Dianete Ângela do Valle Gomes and 8 others
PMID 41905818WHAT IT FOUND
Across 438 studies of voice therapy for adults with behavioral voice disorders, the measures used most were vocal complaint, laryngeal imaging, self-assessment, acoustic analysis and auditory-perceptual judgment.
Aerodynamic testing appeared in only 174 of them, and the authors say the field's assessment habits have barely changed in twenty years.
Key findings
01438 studies of voice therapy for adults with behavioral voice disorders met the inclusion criteria and were mapped.
02Vocal complaint was the most commonly reported assessment component, used in 362 studies (82.65%), followed by interview or case history in 331 (75.57%) and laryngeal imaging in 328 (74.89%).
03The authors state that laryngeal imaging and self-assessment were the most frequently reported outcomes, but that frequent use does not mean these measures are the most sensitive to therapeutic change.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The review could only count outcomes the studies reported explicitly, so assessment procedures that were actually done but described poorly may have been missed. Classifying outcomes was hard because the included studies varied widely and described their outcomes in limited detail, which may have affected how measures were grouped. Newer outcome measures may be underrepresented simply because they are not yet widely used in intervention studies. The review records which measures were used, not whether they are reliable, valid or sensitive to change, so frequency of use here is not a judgement about quality. The included studies themselves were not appraised for risk of bias or study quality.
Declared interests
The authors declare no competing interests. No funding source is stated in the paper.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as evidence that voice therapy works, or that the measures used most often are the best ones. This review only counted which assessment procedures appear in 438 studies; it reports no treatment effects and did not appraise the quality of the studies it included. A measure being popular is not evidence that it detects change.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →