Voice quality assessment after laryngeal cancer radiotherapeutic treatment at initial stages.

Introduction: The voice quality resulting from the radiotherapeutic treatment is a relevant factor to take into consideration at the time of evaluating the results. In this study the results of an objective assessment in relation to the vocal function and the patients' voice self-evaluation are presented.
Materials and Methods: 18 glottic tumour patients, at initial stage, treated with radiotherapy, were studied. There were made an objective analysis on the voice and a study on the perceived quality both by the examiners and the patients.
Results: Normal voices were observed in the 11%, slight dysphonias in 44.4%, moderate dysphonias in 27.8% and severe dysphonias in 16.7% of the cases. Spectrographically, the 18 samples were classified as Grade I one case (5.5%), Grade II 7 (38.8%), Grade III 5 (27.7%) and Grade IV 5 (27.7%). The questionnaire Voice Handicap Index which was completed by the patients themselves, gave out results values very close to normality.
Conclusions: the patients voice acoustic analysis of the series shows the damage thereof after the radiotherapeutic treatment is minimum as well as the handicap feeling of the T1 laryngeal carcinoma patients treated with radiotherapy.