|
Evaluation of Individuals with Voice Disorders
Evaluation of the individual with a voice disorder ("dysphonia") is best seen as a multidisciplinary endeavour. The transdisciplinary approach provides the advantage of allowing clinicians from a variety of professions to cooperate in the assessment, bringing different areas of expertise and perspective to the task, while they dilute each others' reductive clinical biases. A myriad of clinical tools are available to help describe, document, and measure features of voice dysfunction, not the least of which are the clinicians' ears, eyes, and hands. In the years ahead, we will no doubt have access to increasingly refined clinical instrumentation. Nevertheless, machines can never replace the skills and perceptions of the experienced clinical team evaluating a "living-breathing-emoting-vocalizing" human.
During the multidisciplinary assessment, four categories of factors that may contribute to voice disorders are considered:
- technique or level of vocal skill
- lifestyle
- psychological status
- gastro-esophageal reflux.
Because these 4 areas are represented in multidisciplinary discussions so frequently - and generally need to be considered in the treatment protocol - we have developed a model for the management of individuals with voice problems based on these etiological platform components. Read about the Model: Four Squares and a Circle: The Geometry of a Voice Evaluation.
|
 |
