Investigating the Immediate Voice Changes via Perceptual and Acoustic Methods Among Normophonic Swimming Coaches

This research aimed to investigate perceptual and acoustic changes in voice quality due to occupational voice use among swimming coaches with healthy voices.

In this study, 52 swimming coaches were evaluated, and 35 were included, all of whom were determined to have healthy voices by videolaryngoscopy (VLS) and auditory-perceptual assessment. Then, eligible participants assessed both perceptually and acoustically before and after the swimming training sessions on their most intensive working days, at the Ministry of Sports' semi-Olympic swimming pools. The voice samples were gathered according to the Consensus Auditory-Perceptual Evaluation of Voice Turkish protocol (CAPE-V/Turkish). Acoustic analysis was performed using the Multi-Dimensional Voice Program (MDVP) and Analysis of Dysphonia Speech and Voice (ADSV) software. A comparison was conducted between pre-and post-swimming training session measurements for sustained vowel /a/ and sentence weighted with all-voiced phonemes and a connected speech sample. Perceptual assessment was conducted using the Vocal Tract Discomfort Scale (VTDS).

When the subscales of VTDS were assessed; the scores for "Burning" (P = 0.012), "Tight" (P = 0.021), "Dry" (P = 0.021), "Aching" (P = 0.021), "Irritable" (P = 0.008), "Lump in the throat" (P = 0.013) were significantly increased after the swimming training sessions. No statistically significant differences were found in the acoustic analysis parameters following the Benjamini-Hochberg correction for multiple comparisons (P > 0.05).

In this study, swimming coaches developed symptoms of vocal tract discomfort associated with occupational voice use. The findings suggest that a single day of intensive swimming training sessions results in increased vocal effort among swimming coaches. Future research could focus on real-time measurement of vocal load in swimming coaches using tools such as vocal dosimeters, its relationship to acoustic and perceptual parameters, and long-term changes in voice quality.