Changes and recovery of voice quality after sinonasal surgery.
Changes in the configuration of sinonasal cavity after surgery have been assumed to cause changes in the voice quality. The purpose of this study was to know when the hypernasality will be recovered after sinonsal surgery in patients with nasal septal deviation or chronic rhinosinusitis by checking long-term and serially obtained nasalance scores using nasometer. Sixty-five patients underwent sinonasal surgery were included. We classified the subjects into three groups according to the different surgical interventions employed: septoplasty group, endoscopic sinus surgery (ESS) group, and ESS with septoplasty group. The nasalance scores were obtained using a nasometer preoperatively, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 months after surgery. The mean nasalance scores for vowels, nasal consonant, plosive consonant-vowel combinations, nasal consonant-vowel combinations, a hypernasality sentence, and hyponasality sentence increased significantly after sinonasal surgery. Hypernasality was most prominent in all groups for all acoustic parameters 1 month after surgery. Thereafter nasality decreased and returned to its preoperative level in all groups at 5 months in the [m], [ma], [mi], and hypernasality sentence, but at 6 months in the [a], [i], [u], [p(h)a], [p(h)i], and hyponasality sentence. Sinonasal surgery can change the acoustic characteristics of the vocal tract and produce a significant increase in nasality. After nasality showed the highest scores at 1-month post-surgery, it returned to its preoperative level at 5 or 6 months after surgery depending on the subtype of speech stimuli.
Department of Otorhinolaryngology and Biomedical Research Institute, Pusan National University School of Medicine, Pusan National University Hospital, 179 Gudeok-Ro, Seo-gu, Busan, 602-739, Republic of Korea.
Sung-Dong
SD
Kim
Hee-June
HJ
Park
Geun-Hyo
GH
Kim
Soo-Geun
SG
Wang
Hwan-Jung
HJ
Roh
Kyu-Sup
KS
Cho
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D004724:Endoscopy / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D020127:Recovery of Function / Q000502:physiology*; D012852:Sinusitis / Q000150:complications / Q000601:surgery*; D014832:Voice Disorders / Q000209:etiology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D014833:Voice Quality / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult