Clinician reliability in rating voice improvement after laryngeal nerve section for spastic dysphonia

A recent study by Aronson and DeSanto (1983) showed that, although section of the recurrent laryngeal nerve to relieve adductor spastic dysphonia effected considerable improvement in nearly 100% of the voices immediately after surgery, within the next 3 years 64% had returned to their preoperative status or worse. These findings were based on ratings by one speech pathologist, and the study was not designed to measure the reliability of the rater's judgments.