engleski

The indication of change of the acoustic characteristics of the voice in respect to hyperthyroidism

The dysphonia of hyperthyroidism has not been carefully described. The study examines the acoustical characteristics of the voices of 18 female patients with hyperthyroidism (mean age 38.2 years). The phonation of the vowel /a/ was acoustically analyzed. Extraction of the F0, jitter, intensity and HNR, as well as spectrographic analysis was conducted. Maximum phonation and friction time, and vocal rise time were also investigated. Subjects were aksed about voice complaints. Half of the subjects reported subjective voice complaints, and the most frequent were lower voice pitch and hoarseness. Indeed, the results of the acoustic analyses confirmed lower F0 (172 Hz), pathological jitter (1.33%) and very short vocal rise time (50 ms), which are the features of dysphonia. Increased s/z-ratio (1.32) suggested a tendency toward insufficient respiratory function. It may be the result of the weakness of the respiratory musculature, so evaluation of the respiration function would be useful in future study designs. Spectrograms showed reduced loudness and more or less strong noise components. The results suggest that the voice problems may also be taken as clinical symptoms of hyperthyroidism.

hyperthyroidism; dysphonia; vocal fatigue; subjective voice complaints; hoarseness; F0; HNR; s/z ratio; vocal rise time; jitter; narrow-band spectrogram

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