Acoustic voice assessment in Parkinson's disease patients submitted to posteroventral pallidotomy.
Long-term complications in levodopa treated Parkinson's disease (PD) patients caused a resurgence of interest in pallidotomy as an option of treatment. However, postoperative complications such as speech disorders can occur.


OBJECTIVE
The aim of this study is to evaluate the acoustic voice in PD patients, before and after posteroventral pallidotomy.


METHODS
Twelve patients with PD were submitted to neurological and voice assessments during the off and on phases, in the pre-operative, 1st and 3rd post-operative months. The patients were evaluated with the UPDRS and the vocal acoustic parameters -- f0, NHR, jitter, PPQ, Shimmer, APQ (using the software MultiSpeech-Kay Elemetrics-3700).


RESULTS
The off phase UPDRS scores revealed a tendency to improvement at the 1st month and the off phase worsened. The shimmer and APQ improved.


CONCLUSIONS
This study shows that pallidotomy has little improvement on functional use of communication of PD patients.
Mourão
Lucia Figueiredo
LF
Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery, Universidade Federal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
Aguiar
Patrícia Maria de Carvalho
PM
Ferraz
Fernando Antônio Patriani
FA
Behlau
Mara Suzana
MS
Ferraz
Henrique Ballalai
HB
D000368:Aged; D000978:Antiparkinson Agents / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000627:therapeutic use; D004401:Dysarthria / Q000209:etiology* / Q000601:surgery; D005260:Female; D005917:Globus Pallidus / Q000601:surgery*; D006801:Humans; D007980:Levodopa / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000627:therapeutic use; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010300:Parkinson Disease / Q000150:complications / Q000601:surgery*; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D014832:Voice Disorders / Q000209:etiology* / Q000601:surgery; D014833:Voice Quality
D000978:Antiparkinson Agents; D007980:Levodopa