The effect of tonsillectomy on voice quality

Abstract

Introduction/Objective Tonsillitis is a very common condition found in the pediatric population but also in adult patients. One of the consequences of such conditions is poor voice quality. Hoarseness, poor voice impostation, interruption, and hypernazalization are just some of the differences in patient voice quality. The objective of this paper was to examine the effects of tonsillectomy on the voice quality.

Methods The sample included 37 patients, 17 female and 20 male, ranging in age 3–39 years. The method involved recording patients one month before and one month after tonsillectomy with a digital sound recorder, with recordings analyzed in the Praat program. The variables monitored in the basic voice were as follows: voice pitch, standard deviation of voice, degree of voice interruption, jitter, shimmer, and signal-to-noise ratio. In the statistical analysis, in addition to standard descriptive analyzes, t-test and ACNOVA were also used.

Results The results showed that there are effects of tonsillectomy on standard deviation of baseline voice (p = 0.002), shimmer (p = 0.002), baseline voice interruption rate (p = 0.023), signal to noise ratio (p = 0.003). There were no differences in the effects of tonsillectomy with respect to the sex of the subjects.

Conclusion Based on the conducted research, there were some methodological conclusions that could be considered as a recommendation for future research: increase the number of persons in the sample, introduce a variable of chronological age, type of surgical intervention, and gradation of size of the tonsil and adenoid tissue.

Keywords: tonsillectomy; voice quality; acoustic analysis