engleski

Voice changes after short term endotracheal intubation in head and neck surgery.

Background and Goal of Study: Endotracheal intubation is an airway management procedure commonly performed under general anesthesia. The ef fect of endotracheal intubation on voice is not very well investigated, but significant changes of voice characteristics and quality were reported.1, 2 The aim of this prospective cohort study was to evaluate the ef fect of endotracheal intubation on short term functional voice outcomes and voice quality af ter head and neck surgery. Materials and Methods: The study included 60 patients who were operated at the Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, Zagreb, Croatia in 2021. All patients underwent scheduled operations under general anesthesia with endotracheal intubation up to 3 hours. None of these patients suf fered from previous laryngeal pathology. We analyzed the voice outcomes of 40 thyroidectomy patients and 20 patients who underwent parotidectomy or ear surgery. The procedure of anesthesia was standardized. Voice Handicap Index (VHI), GRBAS score and acoustic analysis of voice (lingWAVES SLP Suite Pro VPR) were used for evaluation of voice quality and characteristics. Evaluation was done preoperatively, 2nd postoperative day, 2 weeks and 1 month af ter the surgery. Videostroboscopy was recorded pre and postoperatively. Paired t-test was used to analyze normally distributed continuous variables, and the Wilcoxon signedrank test for normally distributed ones. Statistical significance was accepted for values of p< 0.5. Results and Discussion: In the early postoperative period, a statistically significant increase was detected in both groups on VHI scale, all parameters of GRBAS score and parameters of acoustic voice analysis (increase of jit ter, shimmerand intensity). There is a signal that patients af ter total thyroidectomy have poorer results on all measured variables, but it could not be confirmed on this small sample size. No long term voice changes were observed in any group of patients. Conclusion(s): Endotracheal intubation is a safe method of airway management during head and neck surgery, although it can temporarily alter a patient’s voice quality. Patients should be informed about this, especially if they are voice professionals.

voice changes ; endotrachel intubation ; VHI ; GRBAS

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