Effects of voice therapy: a systematic review

Renée Speyer

Objective: As it becomes more and more accepted that medical treatments should be evaluated by scientific methods, paramedical therapies as well need objective evaluation according to current standards of evidence based medicine. Evaluation of voice therapy fits into this growing interest. A systematic review will be given on literature on the effects of voice therapy carried out by speech therapists, thus, excluding pharmacological or surgical treatments as well as voice training in professional voice users.
Methods: A literature search was performed using the electronic databases Pubmed and Embase. All available inclusion dates up to February 2006 were used. The search was limited to English, German, French, Spanish, and Dutch publications. Mesh terms were supplemented by using free text words (for the period after January 2005). Finally, 47 studies were included.
Results and Conclusions: In general, statistically significant positive but modest and varying therapy effects are found. However, the number of papers is small and many of these effect studies cope with diverse methodological problems. Furthermore, the conclusions of most studies cannot be generalized easily or compared to one another, because of the diversity in phoniatric diagnoses, subject’s personalities, voice therapies as well as voice assessment instruments. The reported results suggest that in studies on therapy effect, it is recommended to restrict the patient population and to use a well defined therapy.In conclusion, many issues in the field of effects of voice therapy have yet been unanswered.

Corresponding author:
Renée Speyer
Dept. of O.R.L. and Head and Neck Surgery,
University Hospital Maastricht, The Netherlands
Dept. of O.R.L. and Head and Neck Surgery
P.O. BOX 5800
6202 AZ Maastricht
The Netherlands
Telephone +31 43 3877580 Fax +31 43 3875580
E-mail: rspe@skno.azm.nl