A Study on Voice Change after Septoplasty with Turbinoplasty

Koo, Soo Kweon; Kwon, Soon Bok; Kim, Young Jun; Jung, Sung Hoon; Moon, Ji Seung

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
Septoplasty with turbinoplasty has the potential to affect voice because it alters the vocal tract. We conducted a study to evaluate the postoperative voice changes and aid using subjective and objective data regarding the effect of surgery.
SUBJECTS AND METHOD
To rule out gender bias, only 23 male patients were enrolled. Voice change was analyzed by a subjective test through a questionnaire and an objective test through acoustic analysis. During each recording session, the subject uttered the words [^m ma: the Korean word for "mother"] and [Nu Na: the Korean word for "sister"]. We then analyzed the nasal consonant ([m] in [^m ma]), the nasalized vowel ([a] in [^m ma] and [a] in [Nu Na]), and the intensity of nasal sound.
RESULTS
In the subjective study, 73.9% of patients reported an improvement in the quality of voice after surgery. Most of the patients reported a reduction in twang. In the objective study, there was a tendency for increased formant frequencies in the nasal consonant, and F1 of [m] in [^m ma] was increased significantly (p=0.003). There was also a tendency for decreased formant frequencies in the nasalized vowel, F2 of [a] in [^m ma] and F1 of [a] in [Nu Na] were decreased significantly (p<0.001), and there was an increase in the intensity of nasal sound, [^m ma] (p=0.009) and [Nu Na] (p=0.013).
CONCLUSION
Nasal sound became clearer with reduced twang after surgery. It is important to keep the phonetic aspect in mind when patients are undergoing septoplasty with turbinoplasty.