Glottal function index questionnaire for screening of pediatric dysphonia

Area of Science:

• Otolaryngology
• Speech-Language Pathology
• Pediatric Health

Background:

• Pediatric dysphonia affects children's communication and quality of life.
• Accurate screening tools are crucial for early diagnosis and intervention.
• The Glottal Function Index (GFI) is a patient-reported outcome measure for voice disorders.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of the Lithuanian version of the Glottal Function Index (GFI-LT) for pediatric dysphonia screening.
• To assess the GFI-LT's reliability and validity in a pediatric population.
• To determine the optimal cut-off score for the GFI-LT in identifying children with voice disorders.

Main Methods:

• The GFI-LT was administered to 82 children (7-16 years old), including 41 with diagnosed voice disorders and 41 healthy controls.
• Auditory-perceptual voice evaluation used the Grade Roughness Breathiness (GRB) protocol.
• Acoustic voice analysis measured parameters like F0, jitter, and shimmer; receiver operating characteristic (ROC) statistics were employed for diagnostic accuracy assessment.

Main Results:

• All patients exhibited dysphonia perceptually; Grade I was most prevalent.
• Acoustic analysis showed significantly poorer voice parameters in the patient group compared to controls (p < 0.001).
• The GFI-LT demonstrated strong correlations with perceptual (Grade, Roughness) and acoustic (jitter, shimmer, SDF0) parameters. An optimal GFI-LT cut-off score of ≥3.0 yielded high diagnostic accuracy (AUC = 0.961) with excellent sensitivity (95.1%) and good specificity (85.4%).

Conclusions:

• The Lithuanian Glottal Function Index (GFI-LT) is a valid and reliable tool for pediatric voice disorder screening.
• The GFI-LT facilitates self-assessment and aids clinicians in identifying children requiring further voice assessment.
• The study confirms the GFI-LT's utility in distinguishing children with dysphonia from healthy peers.