[Dysphonia in childhood]

Dysphonia can be found more often in childhood than in grown-up people. Disturbances of vocal purity occur at least at certain age levels in 23% of all children. Since dysphonia is the most important laryngeal symptom, it should be clarified exactly despite the difficulties of examination in children, in order to exclude tumours, which in most cases will be papillomas. For this purpose we developed a schema which includes not only subjective but also measuring and objective methods. The examples of congenital-inherited, congenital-acquired, non-congenital-inherited and non-congenital-acquired vocal disturbances show that there is a broad spectrum between the evaluation of the first cry, the right evaluation of numerous symptoms, the right evaluation of mutative dysphonias and the assessment of rhinophonias . In cases where it is not possible to clarify sufficiently well the causes of pathological vocal disorders by means of less complicated methods, it is advisable to employ the explained specific examination methods with objective documentation. The oto-rhino-laryngologist consulted by the parents of a child carries considerable responsibility also for the child's subsequent professional career if he is called upon to treat the patient's childhood dysphonia.