The course of voice disorders of student teachers after screening during their training

Loes van der Burgt*, Elke Melis*, Inge van der Vaart*, Marcel Willems*, Felix de Jong**

The teaching profession constitutes a high risk group of professional voice disorders. It is of utmost importance that prevention of voice disorders is already started during the training of student teachers. The aim of this study is to assess the course of voice disorders of student teachers that were picked out during screening by a voice therapist during their training and who were referred to the voice clinic of the University Hospital St Radboud Nijmegen. A general questionnaire and the VHI inventory subsequently were sent to 130 of these female (ex) students after discharge of treatment. Eighty-three questionnaires have been returned and 70 were suitable to be included into this study. Analysis of the medical files and questionnaires were carried out. In 64% of the cases the VHI scores were lower compared to the score at referral. No difference was observed between the students with and without initial vocal fold lesion, whereas 51.4% reported voice problems after treatment. The phonetograms were classified after Schutte. At the time of referral, 37.9% of the phonetograms were classified as great, 22.7% as middle, 16.7% as small and 22.7% as dyscongruent. No significant relation was observed between the size of the phonetogram and reporting voice problems (Chi-sq: p = 0.530) and VHI scores (Kruskall-Wallis: p = 0.863) after treatment and the change of VHI score after treatment (Kruskall-Wallis: p = 0.196). The results of this study indicate the sense of screening of student teachers for voice problems. However, the way of screening and voice care and the perspective of the size of the phonetogram and the presence of vocal fold lesions have to be critically evaluated.

* Dep. of Speech and Language Therapy, Fontys University of Applied Science, Eindhoven ** Dep. ENT, University Hospital St Radboud, Nijmegen.
Burgt,Loes L.G.C. van der,
loes.vanderburgt@student.fontys.nl