[Proposal of a rating scale of posture for simple dysfunctional dysphonia: "S-TRAV"]

This work aims to create a scale to evaluate posture, quick and easy to perform during the assessment of voice in patients with simple dysfunctional dysphonia.

The "S-TRAV" scale was evaluated on 60 subjects with dysphonia and 60 control subjects. It assesses "the overall severity" of the alteration of posture, the "Tension", the "Breathing", the "Ground anchoring" and the "Verticality" both quantitatively (score 0-3) and qualitatively. The patient also assesses his voice disorder and his posture. Postural observation was carried out in five conditions: at rest, conversational voice, reading, projected voice and singing voice. The comparison between the dysphonic subjects and control subjects was used to assess the sensitivity of this tool. Two reviewers rated the scale to determine its reproducibility.

The scale is sensible for the majority of criteria with a significance coefficient less than 0.05. The most discriminate criteria relate to the cervical spine, the overall score of postural severity assessed by the therapist and verticality. All criteria have a low level of variability between the reviewers under all conditions. Most criteria are correlated with the criterion "Overall Severity" of postural alterations under all conditions. Non-sensible criteria were eliminated from the final scale).

This tool is sensitive, reproducible and relevant in assessing the severity of postural alterations and their location. Further studies will validate the scale on a consistent population.