RESUMEN
OBJECTIVES: The purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of adding a cricothyroid visor maneuver to conventional voice-facilitating techniques on voice quality and reported symptoms in patients with primary muscle tension dysphonia. METHODS: This was a double-blind two parallel-group clinical trial in which 20 adult patients participated through convenience sampling. Participants were allocated to intervention (combined treatment) and control (conventional treatment) groups. The intervention was performed for both groups for five sessions, twice a week. The two groups were compared after the intervention for primary outcome measures including maximum phonation time, jitter, shimmer, harmonic-to-noise ratio, and consensus auditory-perceptual evaluation of voice, and for secondary outcome measures including the voice handicap index, the voice activity and participation profile, the voice-related pain scale, and the vocal tract discomfort scale. RESULTS: Within-group primary outcome comparison showed that both groups showed significant improvement in maximum phonation time and consensus auditory-perceptual evaluation of voice indices after treatment. the between-group comparison showed that the maximum phonation time increased significantly in the intervention group after the treatment (P = 0.03) and the effect size was large (es = 1.05). within-group secondary outcome comparison showed that all indices improved significantly in both groups except for the voice-related pain scale frequency. The between-group comparison showed that except for voice-related pain scale frequency, the intervention group reported significantly more improvement in all other self-reporting indices with a large effect size. CONCLUSIONS: The study showed that adding cricothyroid visor maneuver to conventional voice-facilitating techniques, compared to conventional treatment alone, resulted in a significant increase in maximum phonation time, reduction in pain and vocal tract discomfort, increase in activity and participation, and improvement in voice-handicapped index in primary muscle tension dysphonia patients. Therefore adding cricothyroid visor maneuver to other treatments can be an effective method in improving primary muscle tension dysphonia which needs more studies in the future.
RESUMEN
OBJECTIVE: Cross cultural adaptation of the reflux symptom score-12 (RSS-12) into Persian language and to evaluate its validity and reliability in the assessment of patients with laryngopharyngeal reflux disease (LPRD). STUDY DESIGN: A cross-sectional and prospective cohort design. METHODS: A standard forward and backward translation was followed to cross-culturally adapt the RSS-12 into Persian language. To study discriminative validity, the RSS-12p was administrated to 63 patients with LPRD (40 men and 23 women; mean age: 39.26 ± 9.79 years) and 50 healthy volunteers (31 men and 19 women; mean age: 37.24 ± 10.28 years). The patients completed the reflux symptom index (RSI) to assess construct validity. The test-retest reliability was investigated in 31 patients (time interval = 7 days). RESULTS: There were no missing responses and floor or ceiling effects. The assessing of discriminative validity showed that the questionnaire was able to discriminate between patients with LPRD and healthy participants (P<0.001). Construct validity was confirmed by the Pearson correlation between the RSS-12p and the RSI (rp= 0.87; P<0.00). The internal consistency was confirmed with Cronbach α 0.85 and 0.72 for the RSS-12p and quality of life (QoL), respectively. Test-retest reliability was excellent (ICCagreement = 0.98 for the RSS-12p and 0.94 for QoL). CONCLUSIONS: The Persian version of RSS-12 is a valid and reliable self-administered questionnaire for assessing LPRD in Persian-speaking patients.
