Mara Behlau 1

1 Center of Voice Studies, , São Paulo

Voice therapy requires a unique combination of personal characteristics and specific scientific knowledge from the clinician. Usually, the undergraduate program in Speech-Language Pathology covers only the minimum requirement to practice in the voice area, since language is one of the major concerns. However, even if voice is not the most popular field for SLP to practice, the possibility of working with a combination of health and artistic disciplines surely makes it appealing. There are many challenges that voice specialists face to assess and treat clients with an optimal practice attitude. From the clinical stance, the broad diagnostic diversity presents itself as a major problem. Although the voice area has been evolved from a more abstract and artistic nature to a more structured scientific standpoint, there is still a long path to go in order to routinely use practice based evidence interventions. From the evaluation viewpoint, the main clinical dilemmas are related to normalcy of voice, influence of vocal behavior and environment on dysphonia, self-perception of the voice deviation, estimation of adherence to treatment and coping strategies used to deal with the stress of the problem. From the rehabilitation itself, clinicians face the challenge of utilizing the best available evidence, the decision of administering programmatic or custom-made therapy, the selection of approaches, regimen, dismissal and follow up procedures. Measures that assess treatment outcomes are variable what makes it a difficult task to exchange experiences among clinicians. This presentation provides samples and practical solutions.