Estimated subglottic pressure in normal and dysphonic subjects

Area of Science:

• Laryngology
• Speech Science
• Acoustic Analysis

Background:

• Assessing voice disorders often relies on subjective measures.
• Objective measures of laryngeal function are crucial for accurate diagnosis.
• Subglottic pressure is a key determinant of voice production.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the clinical significance of estimated subglottic pressure (ESGP) in differentiating between dysphonic patients and healthy individuals.
• To evaluate the relationship between ESGP, vocal intensity, and pitch.
• To determine if ESGP can serve as an objective parameter in clinical voice assessment.

Main Methods:

• Employed the
• airway interrupted method
• to measure intraoral pressure, estimating subglottic pressure (ESGP).
• Recruited 20 healthy female subjects and 27 female patients with dysphonia.
• Subjects produced sustained vowels at varying pitch and intensity levels.

Main Results:

• ESGP demonstrated a positive correlation with both vocal intensity and, to a lesser extent, pitch in all participants.
• Dysphonic patients exhibited significantly higher ESGP values compared to healthy controls across all tested conditions.
• At normal intensity and pitch, mean ESGP was 6.1 hPa for controls and 8.25 hPa for patients (p = .002).
• Discriminant analysis identified low-intensity, high-pitch phonation as the most effective for distinguishing between groups.

Conclusions:

• Estimated subglottic pressure (ESGP) shows strong potential as an objective clinical tool for differentiating voice patients from healthy subjects.
• The findings suggest that ESGP measurements, particularly under specific phonation conditions, could be integrated into standard clinical voice evaluations.
• Further research may validate ESGP as a routine parameter for objective voice disorder assessment.