Effects of sinus surgery on speech

Abstract

Objectives: (1) To assess the speech of the patients before and after functional endoscopic surgery (FES), and (2) to estimate the role of paranasal sinuses in the nasal tone of speech. Methods: A prospective controlled study done on 30 patients and 10 controls in 2 tertiary medical centers. The patients were suffering from nasal obstruction due to chronic sinusitis. They were subjected to questionnaire with 10 point visual analogue scale, full history, clinical examination by CT scan to paranasal sinuses in addition to subjective assessment. They were also assessed objectively by acoustic analysis of nasalized and nonnasalized speech samples using nasometer and aerodynamic studies using the Results: Objective improvement of the nasal obstruction after surgery by measuring of the mean nasal sentence percentage by nasometer more with patients with severe pathology. -Objective improvement of the nasal flow ,nasal pressure and by dividing nasal sound pressure level /oral sound pressure level measured by (PERCI). There is high individual variation in the nasal resonance, nasal flow, and nasal sound pressure/oral sound pressure. Conclusions: (1) There is improvement of the degree of hyponasality of the patients to match the range of nasality of normal subjects. These changes are affected by the degree of the pathology and the type of the surgical procedure. Despite the fact that FES is a minimal surgical procedure, it may produce significant changes in nasality so we believe that we have to inform patients, especially professional voice users about the possible effects of FES on voice quality. (2) The participation of the nasal sinuses especially the ethmoids in the nasality of speech is negligible in contrast to the inferior turbinate that its partial resection greatly affect the speech nasality.