Voice disorders

Summary

Voice disorders represent an area of communication dysfunctions, which affects a large population of people. Individuals with voice disorders range from a simple case of laryngitis that usually resolves spontaneously to more physical or organic conditions such as laryngeal malignancy.

Symptoms

The main symptom in people with voice disorders is hoarseness or dysphonia, which describes an alteration in voice quality. It is difficult to define a normal or an abnormal voice quality in the absence of a fixed, uniform standard of abnormal voice but according to Aronson (1990) ‘a voice disorder exists when quality, pitch, loudness or flexibility differs from the voices of others of similar age, sex and cultural group’. A voice disorder may also exist when the structure of the laryngeal mechanism, the function, or both no longer meet the voicing requirements of the speaker (Stemple et al., 2000). In medical practice, hoarseness is described as a symptom of laryngeal disorder, which is often the first and only signal of disease, local or systemic, involving this area. The differential diagnosis is important as many different medical and surgical conditions may result in hoarseness.

Aetiology

Voice disorders can be aetiologically classified into organic and non-organic types; the latter are often referred to as functional or psychogenic types. In organic voice disorders, the faulty voice is caused by structural or physical disease of the larynx itself, or by systemic illness that alters laryngeal structure (Boone & McFarlane, 1988).