Body Pain in Professional Voice Users

Abstract

The association between body pain and voice disorder symptoms has been clinically observed but not properly investigated. Intense voice use in which there is an overloading of the vocal mechanism, with strain and effortful phonation may cause discomfort or even pain while speaking. The purpose of this research was to identify, categorize and compare body pains among different professional voice users, their vocal self-assessment, their voice complaints and their sick leave history. A total of 840 individuals, 591 women and 249 men (150 nonprofessional voice users, 100 20 popular singers, 50 classical choral singers, 150 telemarketers, 150 speechlanguage pathologists, 90 actors and 150 teachers) volunteered to participate in this study. They answered a selfassessment questionnaire that investigated voice usage, voice complaints and presence of 13 different body pains. Results show that teachers presented the highest mean number of body aches pains (7.41) and the group of classical singers presented the lowest mean number (2.46). Those with voice complaints presented higher means of body pains (5.68) when compared to those without voice complaints (3.76). In addition, subjects that reported sick leave had higher means of body pains. The current study indicates that there may be a connection between body pain and training specific voice training once it may play a positive role on the management, development and perception of body pain in trained professionals, such as classical singers.