Elsevier

Journal of Voice

Volume 31, Issue 4, July 2017, Pages 515.e9-515.e14
Journal of Voice

Vocal Symptoms and Voice Quality in Children With Allergy and Asthma

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvoice.2016.12.010Get rights and content

Summary

Objectives

The background for dysphonia is multifactorial, and health-related factors have been listed among the factors affecting voice. In previous studies with adult participants, allergy and asthma have been indicated to have a connection to vocal symptoms. With the majority of previous research being studies involving adult participants, it is unclear what the effect of allergy and asthma on children's voices is. The aim of this study was to investigate if allergies and asthma are risk factors for having vocal symptoms.

Methods

The material was collected through paper questionnaires distributed to the parents of new pediatric patients at an allergy clinic. The participants were 108 children aged 9 months to 17 years and 1 month.

Results

Of the children whose parents had filled in the questions on vocal symptoms, 18.2% (n = 18) had frequently occurring vocal symptoms, which was defined as having two or more vocal symptoms every week or more often. The most common vocal symptoms were throat clearing and coughing. There was a significant connection between inhalant allergy and having frequently occurring vocal symptoms. The connection between cough that lasted for more than 4 weeks and having frequently occurring vocal symptoms was also significant. In this study, we found no significant connection between having an asthma diagnosis and having frequently occurring vocal symptoms.

Conclusions

Based on the results of this study, voice screening for children with inhalant allergy would be advisable. Prolonged cough should be taken seriously and be treated, as the mechanical trauma caused by cough seems to have a connection to vocal symptoms.

Section snippets

Background

In studies from the past decades, dysphonia in children has been estimated to be present in 0.12%1 to 23.9%.2 The background of dysphonia is multifactorial, and in previous studies health-related factors,3, 4, 5 personality traits,6, 7, 8 and environmental factors9, 10, 11, 12 have been suggested to influence voice quality. In this study, the main focus will be on allergies and asthma as potential background factors for vocal symptoms in children.

According to Krouse et al,13 the upper and lower

Methods

The material for this study was collected through paper questionnaires distributed to the parents of new pediatric patients at the allergy clinic at Turku University Hospital from 2013 to 2015. An overview of the questionnaire is presented in Table 1. Validated pediatric voice questionnaires were not available in Finnish, and therefore questions that had been used in previous research were used instead.32, 33, 34

The children who visited the allergy clinic were referred there from health centers

Results

Fifteen participants were excluded from the study due to missing information on both vocal symptoms and voice quality, one participant due to having a non-specified developmental disorder and four participants because their parents had explicitly indicated in the questionnaire that their children were going through voice mutation. The remaining participants were 108 children aged 9 months to 17 years and 1 month (mean age: 8 years and 4 months). Of the children, 40.7% (n = 44) were girls and

Discussion

In this study, more children had frequently occurring vocal symptoms (18.2%) than in a previous study with a normal population of children (6%).32 The results of this study are similar to the results of two studies with university students, where 17% had frequently occurring vocal symptoms.33, 34 The difference between these two studies and the present study is that the university students themselves reported the vocal symptoms, whereas in the present study the parents were the ones who

Acknowledgments

This research has partly been funded by the Oskar Öflunds Foundation and the Waldemar von Frenckell Foundation.

References (44)

Cited by (7)

  • Cut-off point for high dysphonia risk in children based on the child dysphonia risk screening proto-col: Preliminary findings

    2020, Clinics
    Citation Excerpt :

    Voice emission is influenced by personality and environmental and social factors, such as the place that a child occupies in the family and how the voice is heard (4), which may also contribute to the occurrence of behavioural dysphonia. Other potentially risky factors to be highlighted include auditory alterations, gastroesophageal reflux, and respiratory diseases (7) in addition to allergic rhinitis and persistent cough, which may favour an increase in negative vocal symptoms (10). The presence of dysphonia can negatively impact the quality of life of children, interfering with their social, affective and emotional well-being.

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Part of the research was presented as a poster at the 30th World Congress of the International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics in Dublin, Ireland, August 21–25, 2016.

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