We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
from Medical topics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2014
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).
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
