Voice activity and participation profile: assessing the impact of voice disorders on daily activities.

Traditional clinical voice evaluation focuses primarily on the severity of voice impairment, with little emphasis on the impact of voice disorders on the individual's quality of life. This study reports the development of a 28-item assessment tool that evaluates the perception of voice problem, activity limitation, and participation restriction using the International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities and Handicaps-2 Beta-1 concept (World Health Organization, 1997). The questionnaire was administered to 40 subjects with dysphonia and 40 control subjects with normal voices. Results showed that the dysphonic group reported significantly more severe voice problems, limitation in daily voice activities, and restricted participation in these activities than the control group. The study also showed that the perception of a voice problem by the dysphonic subjects correlated positively with the perception of limitation in voice activities and restricted participation. However, the self-perceived voice problem had little correlation with the degree of voice-quality impairment measured acoustically and perceptually by speech pathologists. The data also showed that the aggregate scores of activity limitation and participation restriction were positively correlated, and the extent of activity limitation and participation restriction was similar in all except the job area. These findings highlight the importance of identifying and quantifying the impact of dysphonia on the individual's quality of life in the clinical management of voice disorders.

The effect of superoxide dismutase on the recovery of human bone marrow hemopoietic stem cells stored at 4 degreesC.

The effect of superoxide dismutase (SOD) on the recovery of human hemopoietic stem cells stored at 4 degreesC has been studied. Human bone marrow cells from cancer patients without hemopoietic diseases were stored at 4 degreesC for 1-7 days in RPMI 1640 medium containing 10% human AB serum with or without 6 U/ml of SOD. The recovery of colony-forming units of the following types were counted: granulocyte and macrophage type; megakaryocyte type; mixed granulocyte, erythrocyte, megakaryocyte, and macrophage type; and burst-forming units of erythrocytic type. The SOD groups recovered, respectively, 5.6, 5.3, 4.6, and 4.4 times as many colonies as the control group. This study demonstrates that the addition of SOD to hypothermic storage media may increase the recovery of hemopoietic stem cells.