Understanding and Preventing Dysphonia

Functional dysphonia manifests itself in a hoarse voice, aphonia, phonatory fatigue, and a burning throat. It mainly affects people who use their voice professionally such as teachers, lawyers, tourist guides, speakers, singers, and actors. Dysphonia also affects ordinary people who frequently abuse the voice in terms of intensity, tonal pitch, quantity and speed of speech, upsetting the balance and coordination between the respiratory tract and phono-articulatory tools.

Each professional context demands a vocal price which is determined by the load that the vocal apparatus must bear. It mainly depends on two factors: the duration of the speech and the way the laryngeal muscles work. People who aren’t trained to support this load experience vocal fatigue and throat discomfort. They increase their respiratory and vocal effort according to the demands of the professional context. This exerted effort can be damaging over time, and can lead to the onset of the vocal cord pathology described above. I wish to emphasize that in recent years there has been a significant increase in cases of dysphonia in children, even in preschool-age children. This disorder tends to stabilize over time and become chronic in the adult voice. Functional child dysphonia is often caused by imitating the wrong models (parents and peers).

I invite everyone to prevent the onset of this disorder, for yourself and for your children. To learn more about this, you can consult the course catalog “Get to Know Your Voice”.

L’uomo saggio previene.

Friedrich Schiller