The focus of this article is the palliative treatment of a variety of dysphonic conditions. Symptomatic relief of hoarseness can be achieved by voice therapy, augmentative alternative communication modalities, and surgery. The causes of dysphonia addressed herein include amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, stroke, head and neck cancers requiring glossectomy or laryngectomy, unilateral vocal fold paralysis, and presbyphonia. Palliative treatment of dysphonia and voice disorders provides symptomatic relief but not a cure of the underlying disease state. For these patients there are a number of palliative interventions that can greatly improve their quality of life.
Voice disorders can have a drastic impact on the quality of life (QOL) of patients because they adversely affect one of the most basic of facilities: communication. Speech is a complex action requiring precise motor control of the upper digestive and respiratory tracts. Speech production relies on several highly integrated factors that Kantner and West divided into (1) respiration, (2) phonation, (3) resonation, (4) articulation, and (5) neurologic integration. Speech begins with respiration, which provides power during exhalation to vibrate the vocal cords, called “phonation,” producing a complex tone. This tone is modified by the resonators: the pharyngeal, oral, and nasal cavities. It is then shaped by the movement of the tongue, soft palate, teeth, and lips during articulation to arrive at the end result, which is fully formed speech.
Voice disorders can be grouped into two main classes depending on the level of the defect: dysarthria and dysphonia. Dysarthria is caused by neurologic damage to the motor components of speech, which may involve any or all of the speech processes, including respiration, phonation, articulation, resonance, and prosody. Dysphonia refers to disordered sound production at the level of the larynx, classically seen as hoarseness. It may have a neurologic, structural, or functional etiology. It is important not to confuse either of these terms with aphasia, which is a disorder of language caused by neurologic damage. Voice disorders have varying lengths of duration and treatment options depending on the underlying etiology.
Therapeutic options
Standard voice therapy for dysphonia aims to rehabilitate the voice whenever possible, meaning to restore normal function. When that is not possible because of the underlying pathology, the aim is to achieve a voice that is as normal as possible, as pleasant as possible, and achieved with as least effort as possible. Methods of voice therapy can be categorized in several different ways. For dysphonia where the voice is hypophonic, the clinician aims to energize the voice, or make it stronger, louder, and with greater prosodic range (eg, Lee Silverman Voice Treatment, developed by Ramig and coworkers). If the voice is hyperphonic (strained, harsh, or tight), the clinician focuses on relaxing the voice quality and may also focus on altering pitch and intonation (eg, stretch and flow phonation or laryngeal massage). Sometimes, the focus in voice therapy is simply to normalize the voice by focusing on optimal breathing and resonance.
When standard treatments with voice therapy have been exhausted, patients may turn to augmentative alternative communication (AAC) modalities to maintain their ability to communicate. This approach ranges from using visual or gestural cues to using more complicated computer-based technology that “speaks” for the patient to help communicate. As a confounder, the very disease process that has stripped the patient of their vocal abilities may also limit the options one has for alternative means of communication. Early and appropriate referral to determine AAC options is the most important intervention that needs to occur.
Surgery is the final option that can palliate the dysphonic patient, although not necessarily cure the underlying condition. Examples include placing a tracheoesophageal (TE) prosthesis and augmenting an atrophic vocal fold with collagen. In each of these two examples the underlying medical condition is not cured.
Specific diseases
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis
Bulbar amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is known to present with speech problems and has a more severe disease progression overall. Bulbar involvement usually manifests initially with both upper motor neuron (UMN) and lower motor neuron (LMN) involvement. It can present initially, however, as only affecting LMN (progressive bulbar palsy) or UMN (primary lateral sclerosis). Eventually, both upper and lower neurons are affected if the disease is truly ALS.
LMN involvement may present initially by affecting any cranial nerve unilaterally or bilaterally, but eventually it affects all of them bilaterally. LMN damage presents as weakness and atrophy, and increased fatigue. The resting tone is hypotonic. Voice becomes breathy and weak when the vagus nerve is damaged and resonance becomes hypernasal when the muscles and nerves innervating the soft palate are affected. Respiratory weakness (especially from damage to the diaphragm by the phrenic nerve) contributes to a soft voice because of reduced respiratory support for speech. Speech therapy early on may emphasize clear exaggerated articulation and compensatory techniques to help the voice be heard because increased effort may be counterproductive. Voice amplifiers may also be helpful in this regard.
UMN involvement generally affects all the cranial nerves innervating the speech and voice systems. UMN damage causes slowness, loss of precise movements, hypertonicity, and central fatigue. The voice is tight, hoarse, and strained. Velopharyngeal closure may be complete but slow to move; hypernasality is inconsistent. Respiratory support is reduced because of rigidity, but not weakness, and the voice is adequately loud. Rapid vocal changes are not possible; pitch and loudness adversely affect prosody and are perceived as monotone and monoloudness. Voice therapy can help patients in the early changes by teaching volitional relaxation of laryngeal muscles and better breath support and control for speech.
The use of AAC in this population becomes increasingly valuable if the patient chooses invasive ventilation to prolong his or her life. A review by Ball and coworkers showed that ALS patients often use their AAC within weeks of their death, presumably aiding communication at this critical time. Patients with primary bulbar ALS used their AAC technology an average of 24.9 months, whereas those with spinal ALS used their AAC technology for an average of 31.1 months. In this population, it has been recommended that patients be referred for AAC when their spoken reading rate slows to 100 to 125 words per minute (normal is 190 words per minute) or if they must repeat frequently to be understood. Eventually, the dysarthria of ALS may lead to anarthria and AAC becomes necessary for communication. Although most of the computerized systems now include a synthetic voice, newer voices are being developed that sound more natural and are easier for listeners to accept.
When they are no longer able to type on a keyboard to communicate, patients have a multitude of options including computers that are accessed by dynamic touch screens, and head-tracking and eye-tracking technologies. AAC may enable even quadriplegic patients to communicate effectively. First attempts at directly exploiting brain electric currents to control computers have shown encouraging results. Kubler and colleagues have reported that they were able to help four people severely disabled by ALS to learn to operate a brain-computer interface with electroencephalogram rhythms recorded over the sensorimotor cortex. At this stage, however, the communication systems are not practically functional.
For surgical options in palliating ALS, Esposito and colleagues reviewed the efficacy of a palatal lift or augmentation prosthesis to improve speech in 25 ALS patients. They were able to demonstrate that 84% treated with a palatal lift demonstrated improvement in their dysarthria, specifically in reduction of hypernasality, and 19 (76%) of these patients benefited at least moderately for 6 months. Of the 10 patients treated with a combination palatal lift and augmentation prosthesis, 6 (60%) demonstrated improvement in articulation.
Parkinson’s Disease
Disorders of voice and speech within this population is estimated to be 70% to 85%, with greater than 30% of these patients finding it to be the most disabling part of the disorder. Severity is often directly related to the other physical symptoms seen. The underlying physiologic problems include akinesia, bradykinesia, rigidity, and tremor. Parkinsonian speech is classically monopitch, of reduced vocal intensity, hoarse, harsh or breathy voice in quality, with articulatory imprecision, and of a variable rate with short rushes of speech punctuated by inappropriate silence. Fluorographic studies have demonstrated the most common progression of vocal tract symptoms, which begins with laryngeal dysfunction, followed by alterations in lingual and subsequently labial functions. In a study by Perez and colleagues, vocal tremor was found in 55% of Parkinson’s patients.
Despite the high incidence of speech and voice impairment, studies suggest that only 3% to 4% of people with Parkinson’s disease (PD) receive speech treatment. Voice therapy is of great benefit to Parkinson’s patients in the early and mid stages. A well-researched program shown to be effective and efficacious is the Lee Silverman Voice Treatment, developed by Ramig and coworkers. This therapy teaches the patient to self-cue him or herself to speak loudly. When speaking loudly, other aspects of voice and speech generally improve, so the final result is a louder, better intoned voice with better breath support and clearer articulation.
In the early to middle stages of speech dysfunction, PD patients are managed with rehabilitative voice therapy, and sometimes with amplifiers. In later stages, behavioral or environmental techniques may be useful. Alphabet supplementation, where the patient points to the first letter of each word as he or she says it, is designed to control speech rates and provide the listener with additional visual cues. Techniques using changes to the patients’ environment can be used to facilitate communication. In a small portion of PD patients, all speech may be lost. Because of the overall motor control impairment and the frequent cognitive impairment in late disease, complex AAC interventions are difficult to institute. These patients typically do best with letter-by-letter typing with print or speech output.
Unfortunately, as PD takes its course, the basal ganglia are unable to continue to regulate this function of speech and so voice therapy becomes less effective. In clinicians’ experience, more severe PD patients can often still communicate verbally as long as someone else cues them each time they talk to “speak loudly.” For those who cannot benefit from this cueing, voice amplification or AAC are alternatives.
Treatment of parkinsonian movement symptoms can come at the cost of increased speech deficits. Long-term effects of using levodopa have led to the use of surgical procedures that may relieve symptoms without associated drug side affects. Pallidotomy for an overactive globus pallidus can reduce tremor and rigidity, but Mourao and colleagues have found that this treatment has little improvement on functional use of communication for PD patients and can actually cause further speech deterioration if the procedure is done bilaterally. Electrical stimulation to an overactive subthalmic nucleus has been shown to improve all the cardinal symptoms of PD. Studies by Pinto and colleagues and Rousseaux and colleagues have demonstrated that although loudness, pitch, and motor movements may improve poststimulation, they do so at the price of decreased intelligibility.
Temporary procedures may provide relief to PD patients without adverse affects. Transoral vocal cord collagen injection for glottal insufficiency may reduce vocal fatigue and be a useful adjunct to voice therapy. Dias and colleagues have found evidence that repetitive transcranial stimulation of the primary motor cortex may be beneficial to vocal functioning in PD. Such factors as drug effects, stage of disease, and risk/benefit profile must be taken into consideration when considering treatment options for patients with PD. Among all of the mentioned options, only behavioral therapy has shown a sustained beneficial effect on the voice and speech functions of patients with PD. Voice therapy has been proved the most beneficial to these patients.
Multiple Sclerosis
Hartelius and coworkers, in an analysis of a cohort of 77 patients with multiple sclerosis, found there to be an incidence of dysarthria of 51%, but this depends on the level of severity of the disease overall. The dysarthria results from damage to myelin sheaths in multiple motor and sensory pathways in the central nervous system leading to the bulbar LMNs. Because of its variable pattern of damage, the dysarthria can manifest differently in different patients. It can result from UMN damage, cerebellar damage, or both, with a mixed dysarthria being the most common variety. Not surprisingly, the severity of speech deviation is positively correlated with overall severity of neurologic involvement, type of disease course, and number of years in progression.
The nature of the voice problem also varies. Dysphonia caused by UMN damage tends to be strained, harsh, and loud. Dysphonia caused by ataxia may have adequate vocal quality, but pitch and loudness control are often aberrant. Respiratory support is uneven, contributing to the loudness variability. On sustained phonation, a slow tremor is heard. If the dysarthria has no UMN involvement, muscle tone is low and there is no strained vocal quality. If there is UMN involvement, however, a strained voice quality usually predominates, although it is inconsistent.
Voice therapy is symptomatic. Depending on the voice quality, it may be aimed at relaxation or “ramping” up voice volume and projection. Helping the patient control vocal parameters is the key. Dysarthria caused by multiple sclerosis rarely progresses to the point where the patient is anarthric and needs AAC. Compensatory strategies generally suffice as the dysarthria progresses beyond the point of rehabilitation.
Cerebrovascular Accident or Stroke
Dysphonia from vocal cord paralysis resulting directly from stroke is rare. Most of these cases are associated with brainstem stroke, lateral medullary syndrome, Wallenberg syndrome, and Bernard-Horner syndrome affecting the recurrent laryngeal nerve. Venketasubramanian and colleagues prospectively determined the frequency of vocal cord paresis among first-ever acute ischemic stroke patients. Of the 54 patients with stroke, they found the incidence of vocal cord paralysis to be 20%. Of these, 11.4% of the lacunar infarcts and 16.4% of the cortical and large subcortical groups presented with vocal cord paralysis, affecting the cord contralateral to the side of brain lesion. They also found that 80% of patients with lesions in the lateral medulla suffered from vocal cord paralysis, ipsilateral to the side of the brain lesion. Motor recovery of the paralysis from these etiologies is comparable with motor recovery in general in stroke patients, such that earlier recovery often insinuates a better prognosis.
Whereas brainstem strokes can affect isolated cranial nerves, cerebral hemisphere strokes frequently result in a dysarthria that affects all cranial nerves innervating the speech and voice musculature. A unilateral hemispheric stroke usually results in only minor voice abnormality because of the crossed innervation to the laryngeal region (in contrast to tongue weakness, which is unilaterally weak). A pure cortical stroke also results in a minor dysphonia. In contrast, bilateral strokes (usually multiple strokes) result in a more severe UMN dysarthria that is similar to that of ALS, with slow speech, imprecise articulation, and strained voice quality. Volume is normal or loud and loudness and pitch variability (fine adjustments) are impaired. Respiratory support and control for vocal intensity and stress patterns are reduced. AAC is uncommon in this population because they usually have sufficient speech and voice function to communicate verbally.
Head and Neck Cancer
The ultimate goal of speech rehabilitation after head and neck cancer treatment is functional communication. The goal is to maximize the residual anatomy and physiology to achieve naturalness of the individual’s communication. The eventual success depends on the ease with which the patient learns and applies communication strategies, how well their communication is received by family and others, and how satisfied the patient is with the skill. The following section looks at how well two subpopulations of head and neck cancer patients (total glossectomy and total laryngectomy) meet these objectives.
Total glossectomy patients
For relatively small tumors of the tongue and floor of mouth, simple excision with primary closure is often used. This results in a diminution of tongue volume and some tethering of the tongue but relatively good speech. As tumors become more extensive in size with posterior or deep spread, the volume of excision increases and the need for reconstruction beyond primary closure arises. In these cases, larger surgical defects are reconstructed with flaps, grafts, or free tissue transfer. The reconstruction may result in relatively bulky adynamic structures with potential restrictions in tongue mobility and problems with deglutition, speech, and prosthetic rehabilitation. Other factors that may increase morbidity are mandibular or maxillary resection, radiotherapy, and total laryngectomy.
Vowel and glossal consonant production may be altered by resection of the tongue and the manner of surgical closure. The effect on the listener is reduced intelligibility of the speaker’s verbal output. Following partial surgery of the tongue with primary closure, intelligibility is least affected, and may be near normal ranging from 70% to 100%. After larger resections that require tongue tip reduction, tethering, or bulky flaps, intelligibility of speech drops markedly to 25% to 40%. Total glossectomy removes the entire tongue and results in intelligibility scores as low as 0% to 8% in some studies.
Partial glossectomy may be treated quite successfully with articulation training and prosthodontic palatal appliances. Standard speech therapy and prosthetic management are often ineffective for total glossectomy patients because the tongue remnant is small, immobile, or nonexistent and the reconstructed tissue may be adyanmic. Instead, speech therapy is targeted toward teaching compensatory articulatory maneuvers, such as elongating /v/ for /d/ or thrusting the mandible forward for vowels and alternating pause time, phoneme duration, vocal intensity, pitch intonation, and rate of speech. Palatal augmentation prostheses have been found to be less effective for total glossectomy when the reconstructed tongue tissue is adyanmic. Furia and colleagues reported significant improvement in intelligibility for total glossectomy patients after 10 to 16 sessions of compensatory speech therapy. Despite speech therapy and prosthetic augmentation, however, overall intelligibility remained very low ranging from 18% to 42%.
Total glossectomy has earned its reputation as a mutilating surgical procedure because of the associated functional impairments and presumed loss of QOL. Total glossectomy is a radical surgical procedure that impacts significantly on a patient’s emotional, physical, and psychosocial state. QOL measurement requires detailed assessment of not only functional outcomes but also their effect on a patient’s well-being. QOL studies caution that functional status and QOL are not equivalent, and that function cannot predict QOL.
Although patient functional outcomes are well reported, there has been only one study of QOL in patients having undergone total glossectomy. Ruhl and colleagues reported that highly motivated patients adjust to the functional deficits and have a good QOL after total glossectomy. Maintenance of this QOL was facilitated by the presence of strong emotional support from family and friends in addition to ready access and encouragement from medical and rehabilitation teams. When patients were not well-motivated, lack support, or were not well selected, however, QOL was poor and the functional consequences were overwhelming and devastating.
Some total glossectomy patients may find that they are able successfully to communicate, even with substantially reduced intelligibility. Other patients may not have developed the necessary compensatory skills nor be satisfied with their communication. They commonly report that they are misunderstood when talking with new listeners, when opening up a new topic of conversation, and when talking on the telephone or in noisy environments. Communication may increasingly be reliant on alternate means of communication, such as flip cards, writing, and gestures. A wide range of AAC devices are available for patients who cannot communicate verbally.
Total laryngectomy patients
There are currently three primary options for the voice and speech rehabilitation of laryngectomy patients: (1) esophageal speech, (2) use of an artificial larynx, and (3) TE voice restoration. The choice of communication options for the laryngectomy patient should be made by the individual with input from the physician and speech-language pathologist.
In a large prospective laryngeal preservation study conducted in the Veterans Administration (VA) system, 166 total laryngectomy patients were followed for 2 years posttreatment. Artificial larynx use was found to be the predominant mode of alaryngeal communication across follow-up. Most patients in that study were using an artificial larynx at 1 month post–cancer treatment (85%), and most (55%) were still using it as their primary means of communication as of the last scheduled assessment at 24 months posttreatment. The VA study also found that there was an increase in TE speech acquisition across the 2-year follow-up period, with 2% using secondary TE speech at 1 month post–cancer treatment and 31% using TE speech at 24 months. The noted increase in TE speech use across follow-up seemed to account primarily for the concurrent decrease in artificial larynx use. In studies of TE voice restoration with primary insertion of an indwelling voice prosthesis, the rate of TE usage ranged from 78% to 96% up to 2 years postsurgery. Hillman and colleagues found that no more than 7% of the survivors developed usable esophageal speech at any point in time across the 2-year follow-up period. Only 8% of patients in the VA study were nonvocal at 2 years.
The VA study reported that none of the three modes of alaryngeal speech were judged to be 100% intelligible. TE speech was judged to be 91% intelligible, followed closely by esophageal speech at 90%. Artificial larynx speech was the least intelligible of the modes but still fairly high at 80%.
Ease of use, immediate postlaryngectomy voice production, and elimination of any delay in reacquiring verbal communication have been cited as some reasons for successful artificial larynx use. Failure successfully to use an artificial larynx has been attributed to dissatisfaction with its mechanical sound quality; low volume; reduced intelligibility; inconvenience of using one hand to hold the device; failure to encourage its use; and postsurgery tissue changes or postradiation fibrosis, which preclude the use of the most popular neck-type devices.
Success with TE speech has been attributed to the relative ease of the surgical procedure and to the quality of speech, which is fluent, intelligible, and spontaneously acquired with minimal speech therapy. Failure to acquire primary or secondary TE speech has been associated with postoperative complications, such as mediastinitis, aspiration pneumonia, persistent pharyngocutaneous fistula, stomal stenosis, salivary aspiration, cellulitis or infection, abscess, cervical spine fracture, false tract creation, pharyngoesophageal stenosis, and pharyngospasm. Behavioral factors, such as difficulty with digital occlusion, gagging, inadvertent prosthesis dislodgment with fistula closure, aspiration of the prosthesis, lack of motivation, and failure to care for the stoma or prosthesis, have also been implicated in the failure to acquire TE speech.
Factors that have been associated with successful acquisition of esophageal speech include extent of surgery, positive attitude, psychosocial adjustment, frequency of speech therapy, and family support. Failure to acquire esophageal speech has been associated with lack of motivation, limited physical strength, postoperative radiotherapy, dysphagia, and limited speech therapy.
Satisfaction with voice including overall satisfaction with speech quality, telephone use, limitations of interactions, and satisfaction with QOL were reported on by Hillman and coworkers. Results were essentially in line with what might have been predicted based on the findings for speech intelligibility, and also generally in agreement with previous reports dealing with communication satisfaction among alaryngeal speakers. The two groups that displayed the best recovery of intelligibility (ie, TE and esophageal speakers) also showed the best recovery of communication functioning. Artificial larynx users had lower satisfaction than the other two alaryngeal speaker groups. These results are in general agreement with previous research. Satisfaction with nonvocal communication in the VA study was substantially lower than for verbal communication and much more variable over time.
In one study of QOL after total laryngectomy, the presence of a stoma or the use of alaryngeal speech production was not associated with inferior QOL; nor was functional disability correlated with its importance. As part of the VA laryngeal preservation study, Terrell and coworkers reported that the patients who underwent chemotherapy plus radiation reported better QOL scores than the laryngectomies, chiefly because of freedom from pain, better emotional well-being, and lower levels of depression than preservation of voice function.
Cancer of the head and neck often necessitates adjunctive treatments to provide patients with adequate voice use. Tumor debulking can be a useful adjunct to palliate or prepare patients for chemotherapy, radiotherapy, or definite surgery. There are many advantages to the laser as a debulker: rapidity, repeatability, coagulability, atraumaticity, precision, sterilization, and prompt healing. Lim has reported successful debulking in 118 of 120 patients by CO 2 and neodymium:yttrium-aluminum-garnet lasers. Paleri and colleagues reported successful laser debulking in a study of 43 patients, with mean number of debulking per patient to be 1.9, avoiding a tracheotomy in 91%. More recently, Phelan and colleagues have reported successful debulking with the use of microdebriders to re-establish airways in patients with obstructing laryngeal tumors. The avoidance of tracheostomy in these patients is of great benefit because there has been a reported risk of 8% to 41% for tumor seeding of the peristomal wound with resultant recurrence after laryngectomy.
Vocal Cord Paralysis
Vocal fold paralysis may be the presenting symptom of an intrathoracic malignancy. As a result, there may be significant dysfunction of speech, swallowing, respiration, diminished cough reflex with subsequent secretion retention, aspiration, and life-endangering pneumonia. In survey of 42 patients with vocal fold paralysis caused by intrathoracic disease, Bando and colleagues found the most common cause to be lung cancer, followed by thoracic aortic aneurysm, metastatic tumor from other regions, pulmonary and mediastinal tuberculosis, and esophageal cancer. They found that most lesions were easily identified with a chest radiograph, but lesions in the aortopulmonary window were difficult to detect. When in doubt, a contrast-enhanced CT is of great use to detect any mass in this region.
To prevent the sequelae from laryngeal or vagus nerve sectioning during lung cancer resection, Mom and colleagues described a series of 14 patients who underwent concomitant vocal fold medialization during their resection surgery. They were able to achieve an 86% success rate, defined as patients satisfied with the quality of their voice. It may be of great benefit to consider concomitant vocal procedures when thoracic surgery is anticipated to create vocal cord dysfunction.
The most common treatment for vocal fold paralysis is medializing the weak vocal fold toward the midline, for which there are different manners in which this medialization can be achieved. This approach does not address the underlying condition, but rather treats the symptoms. Injection medialization laryngoplasty is one popular option with hyaluronic acid, collagen, and Gelfoam being temporary injectable materials. For more permanent effects, fascia, calcium hydroxyapatite, autologous fat, and more recently titanium can be used for injection. If the paralysis is caused by a terminal disease, only then is Teflon considered because of long-term complications, such as granuloma formation, associated with its use. A type 1 thyroplasty (medialization laryngoplasty) is considered a permanent means to medialize the immobile vocal fold by pushing it medially by external approach. Popular choices for thyroplasty implants include silastic blocks and Gor-Tex. In cases of vocal fold paralysis with a large posterior glottal gap, arytenoid adduction or arytenopexy may be indicated in conjunction with type 1 thyroplasty.
Presbyphonia
Voice problems are common in the elderly population. Among retirement community members 65 years of age and older, a prevalence of 20% with 13% having moderate to profound dysphonia was found. In addition, Roy and colleagues demonstrated a lifetime prevalence for a voice disorder in 47% of elderly 65 years of age and older. Dysphonia was often chronic with 60% of the 29.1% with a current voice disorder having the problem for more than 4 weeks. Voice problems have a significant impact on elderly patients’ QOL. Over a 5-year span among 50 to 81 year olds, altered acoustic properties of the voice, increased vocal roughness, increased patient-reported vocal instability, and avoidance of social events was noted. Hence, appropriate diagnosis and treatment is necessary.
Presbyphonia refers to voice changes related to aging of the larynx. Patients with presbyphonia may complain of a weak voice, change in pitch, decreased projection, vocal fatigue, the sense of taking more effort to speak, and altered quality of the voice. These alterations are related to a multitude of changes affecting the phonatory system. The larynx descends in the neck, and the laryngeal cartilages ossify, altering the resonant properties of the larynx and pharynx. Decreased muscle bulk with fatty degeneration and altered distribution of muscle fiber type has been shown. Alterations within the lamina propria and connective tissue of the vocal fold affect the vibratory characteristics and in conjunction with muscle atrophy produce a bowed membranous vocal fold with possible glottal insufficiency during phonation. Secretions, which provide important lubrication during vocal fold vibration, decrease and become thicker. Lastly, one’s overall health seems related to vocal function.
Although presbyphonia is an important cause of dysphonia, other etiologies must also be considered in the elderly population. The prevalence of presbyphonia among the elderly ranges from 4% to 30%. Woo and colleagues have noted that certain diseases are more common among the elderly with a higher prevalence of neurologic voice disorders and less functional voice disorders in patients older than 60 years. In addition, multiple factors, such as vocal hygiene, decreased respiratory support, medication effects, and other medical problems, may cause dysphonia. Hence, a thorough evaluation is essential to diagnose and treat accurately elderly patients presenting with dysphonia.
Treatment for presbyphonia includes both voice therapy and surgical options. Because of the voice changes associated with aging, patients may develop compensatory strategies, such as straining, which may worsen the dysphonia. Although voice therapy aimed at reducing the compensatory behaviors may unmask the glottal incompetence caused by the atrophic vocal folds, voice therapy has been shown to improve voice-related QOL in patients 60 years of age and older. A total of 74% of patients improved with voice therapy, 21% were worse after voice therapy, and 5% reported no change from voice therapy. The influence of the degree of glottal insufficiency on voice therapy outcomes and the ability to preselect which patients will benefit from voice therapy requires further investigation. Furthermore, voice therapy aimed at strengthening, such as Lee Silverman Voice Treatment, may be an effective treatment for presbyphonia. Although three patients with presbyphonia demonstrated improved loudness following Lee Silverman Voice Treatment, more study is necessary. Despite the limitations, voice therapy is a valid, noninvasive, first-line treatment for elderly patients with dysphonia.
When voice therapy does not improve the voice, surgical options should be entertained. To address the glottal insufficiency, bilateral medialization laryngoplasty procedures have been developed. A multitude of injection materials are available for injection laryngoplasty. Collagen injection bilaterally has resulted in improved voice perceptually and improved voice handicap as measured on the Voice Handicap Index. Additionally, bilateral medialization laryngoplasty with silastic implants is also a viable option. Patients with presbyphonia had improved voice based on self-report and clinician ratings. Certain changes in implant design must be taken into consideration in treating vocal fold atrophy compared with vocal fold paralysis. Avoiding overcorrection anteriorly and reducing the posterior flange and shortening the anteroposterior dimension are important adjustments for presbyphonic patients. Too large a posterior flange could impinge on the arytenoid, decreasing its mobility. Gor-Tex has also been a useful material for bilateral medialization laryngoplasty procedures.
Despite the versatility of bilateral medialization laryngoplasty, simply correcting the glottal insufficiency may not fully correct the voice problem. Such procedures mainly address the glottal gap in the axial plane. Yet, because of the atrophic changes of the vocal fold muscle and lamina propria, volume loss also occurs in the coronal plane. Simply repositioning atrophic vocal folds does not address the volume loss to the vocal folds. A combination of procedures, such as bilateral medialization laryngoplasty with implants and injection to restore bulk, may be required. Postma and colleagues noted that 35% of patients required lipoinjections after bilateral silastic medialization laryngoplasty to optimize the outcome. Furthermore, such advances as using growth factors and muscle stem cell injections into atrophic vocal folds may prove to be exciting potential future interventions.
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