Patients with vocal hyperfunction will undergo standard of care voice therapy with ambulatory voice monitoring before therapy and after the first 3 voice therapy sessions. Biofeedback will be added to ambulatory monitoring after the 2nd voice therapy session only.
This study will use a single subject design to determine if adding ambulatory voice biofeedback to conventional voice therapy can result in faster carryover (generalization) of new vocal behaviors established during voice therapy to daily life. Here, ambulatory voice biofeedback will be based on objective measures that have subject-specific sensitivity to vocal hyperfunction. Hypothesis: The ambulatory voice biofeedback week (week 2) will result in higher generalization percentages when compared to baseline and the week prior to the initiation of biofeedback (week 1). This effect will be retained when the biofeedback is removed (week 3), thus it will be different than baseline and week 1, but not different than week 2.
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
NA
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
NONE
Enrollment
39
Patients will be provided cues regarding their vocal behavior in daily life. Specifically, the patient will receive 100% feedback = a vibrotactile cue on a smartwatch every time the patient voices incorrectly. The specific objective voice measure for biofeedback will depend upon which measure is most strongly associated with improvements during voice therapy.
Massachusetts General Hospital - Center for Laryngeal Surgery and Voice Rehabilitation
Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Percent Compliance
Using a patient-specific voice measure, patients will be asked to avoid crossing numeric thresholds. The amount of voicing spent within desired thresholds will be the "percent compliance".
Time frame: Week 1, Week 2, Week 3
This platform is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional.