Dysphonia among teachers: risk factors and laryngeal diagnoses

Abstract

Introduction - The prevalence of voice disorders among teachers is 50%. The causes include long working hours, inadequate classroom installations, excessive number of students in classes and pollution. These risk cofactors cause an overload phonatory resulting in vocal symptoms and mucosal injuries. The voice is the main professional instrument of teachers, and dysphonia causes severe consequences in professional performance as miss work, medical license, emotional and financial problems. The decrease of voice disorders in teachers is directly related to the identification, elimination of risk factors and the adoption of preventive vocal care. Objectives - To study in teachers: vocal symptoms, risk cofactors and videolaryngoscopic findings. Methods - Approximately 80 dysphonic teachers treated in the Voice Disorders Ambulatory (Botucatu Medical School, Unesp) will be included in this study. Teachers will answer a questioner about voice conditions, identification data, vocal symptoms and comorbidities. They will be submitted to an auditory evaluation ( timpanometry and tonal audiometry). Teachers with sensorineural hearing loss (bone conduction thresholds above 60dB) will be excluded. They will be submit to videolaryngoscopy exams for laryngeal diagnose. The results will be presented in graphs and tables and analyzed by statistical methods.