<b>Acoustic and perceptive-hearing analysis of the voice in parkinsonian patients pre and post – speech language therapy</b> - DOI: 10.4025/cienccuidsaude.v8i3.9010

Abstract

The objective of this study was to evaluate the voice of the individual with Parkinson’s Disease, pre and post-exercises of phonatory efforts, and re-evaluate them at 1 and 6 months post-treatment. Ten parkinsonians of both sexes, who were submitted to perceptual auditory and acoustic analysis of their voices, participated in this study. The speech material collected was sustained vowel and chained speech. The perceptual auditory analysis showed that all individuals with Parkinson presented alteration in the vocal quality and most of them obtained reduction of the deviation degree remaining constant up to the one month re-evaluation. In the acoustic analysis we have verified that maximum phonation times were below expectation, but only women reached values considered normal in post-treatment evaluations. Fundamental frequency values (f0) on male appeared to be similar in comparison to aged population and it increased in both sexes post-treatment. As for the variability of fundamental frequency (f0), there was a significant increase on values in post-treatment evaluation. Vocal intensity increased in the post-treatment and remained stable during the one to six month post-treatment re-evaluations. In general, there was improvement in vocal quality, vocal intensity and speech intelligibility, showing the effectiveness of the adopted technique.