Vocal Symptoms and Voice Quality in Children With Allergy and Asthma
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.
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Cited by (7)
The Occurrence of Laryngeal Pathologies in a Treatment-Seeking Pediatric Population
2023, Journal of VoiceCut-off point for high dysphonia risk in children based on the child dysphonia risk screening proto-col: Preliminary findings
2020, ClinicsCitation 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.
Consensus for voice quality assessment in clinical practice: guidelines of the European Laryngological Society and Union of the European Phoniatricians
2023, European Archives of Oto-Rhino-LaryngologyThe Laryngeal Manifestations of Allergic Sensitization: a Current Literature Review
2022, Current Otorhinolaryngology Reports
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.