ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study is to verify the perceptive-auditory and acoustic voice changes after speech therapy with phonation into tubes in a male subject with unilateral vocal fold paralysis, medialized surgically. The patient was a male, twenty nine years and one month, with otorhinolaryngological diagnosis of left vocal fold paralysis in abduction. The subject was referred to medialization surgery of the left vocal fold (Thyroplasty type I) and to speech therapy. Five collections of the vowel /a:/ occurred at different times, as follows: before surgery; ten days after surgery (before speech therapy); six days after the performance of the technique of phonation into latex tube immersed in water; six days after the performance of the technique of phonation into glass tube immersed in water; six days after the performance of the technique of phonation into tube of smaller diameter. There was acoustic analysis of glottal source, spectrographic analysis and perceptive-auditory analysis. Final comments: The speech therapy with three different exercises of phonation, for 18 days, provided, in the acoustic analysis, improvement of most frequency perturbation measures and measures of voiceless or not sounded components; improvement of the intensity of the tracing color of the wide-band spectroscopy; improvement of the regularity of the spectrographic tracing and of the definition of formants; in the perceptive-auditory analysis, there was reduction of tension, roughness and breathiness.
Keywords:
Voice; Voice Quality; Voice Training; Voice Disorders; Speech Therapy; Spectrography; Vocal folds
