Voice Quality Following Unilateral Vocal Fold Paralysis: A Randomized Comparison of Therapeutic Modalities

In this work, a study on the efficacy of different therapeutic modalities in patients with unilateral vocal fold paralysis (UVFP) was carried out. The study included 20 patients with UVFP, divided into two groups. The objective of this work is to evaluate the voice quality in these patients and to compare the voice following surgery and voice therapy. Group I received voice therapy and group II underwent thyroplasty type I and type IV. The voice was assessed pretreatment and 1 and 3 months posttreatment. Different parameters, such as habitual fundamental frequency (F0), signal-to-noise ratio, jitter, shimmer, maximum phonation duration, s/z ratio, and objective and subjective ratings of dysphonia, were analyzed. It was observed that in group I, all the parameters in seven out of ten patients improved significantly, except for shimmer. In group II, voice quality improved in 70% of the patients with all the parameters. As per previous studies, jitter and shimmer improved after a rehabilitation procedure. However, in this work, it is observed that shimmer did not improve in patients receiving voice therapy. The present study is the first of its type documenting and comparing the efficacy of voice therapy and thyroplasty type I and type IV in patients with UVFP.