[Relationship between laryngeal morphology and voice changes in old people].
OBJECTIVE
To investigate the relationship between laryngeal morphologic changes and voice changes in old people.


METHODS
Fifty four healthy people older than 60 years were studied. Laryngeal morphologic changes and vocal acoustics features were observed and analyzed. Forty six college students aged between 21-22 years were included as the young control group, and 23 of them are males and 23 females.


RESULTS
Sixteen cases with vocal fold atrophy (55.2%), 18 cases with glottis incompetence (62.1%), 16 cases with hypoglottic mucosal edema (55.2%), 12 cases with surpassing ventricular fold (refers to the phenomenon that the ventricular fold covers part or all of the vocal cord during phonation) (41.4%) were observed in the old male; 15 cases with edema of interarytenoid fold (60.0%), 14 cases with glottis incompetence (56.0%), 12 cases with vocal fold atrophy (48.0%), 8 cases with vocal fold edema (32.0%) were observed in the old female. Fundamental frequency (F 0) ascended in the male while declined in the female; jitter, shimmer and noise to harmonic ratio enlarged, and vocal tremor intensity index increased too. Soft phonation was noticed especially in the voices of the old male. Compared with the control group, there was statistic significance (each p value is less than 0.05 or 0.01) except for the increasing of jitter, shimmer and soft phonation index in the old female.


CONCLUSIONS
Significant changes were found in the old when the morphology of larynx and features of vocal acoustics were studied, hypoglottic edema and interarytenoid edema are common in the old.
Wang
Li-ping
LP
Department of Otorhinolaryngology, The Second Affiliated Hospital, China Medical University, Shenyang 110004, China. wanglp@cmu2h.com
Gao
Yuan
Y
Yang
Jing
J
Wang
Jin
J
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007828:Laryngoscopy; D007830:Larynx / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D014827:Vocal Cords / Q000502:physiology*; D014833:Voice Quality; D055815:Young Adult