Spastic Dysphonia Treatment
Spastic Dysphonia
Treatment:
Major steps have been taken in the last thirty years towards understanding and curing spastic dysphonia. In 1976, a surgeon reported that cutting the recurrent laryngeal nerve in thirty-four patients with spastic dysphonia had yielded significant improvement in speech. This procedure is now known as a unilateral recurrent laryngeal nerve (RLN) resection. After the operation, the patient usually exhibits a breathy phonation, but voice therapy can reduce this side effect.
Speech pathologists have also had success with therapy sessions where the patients with spastic dysphonia work to relax their voice. The therapy sessions consist of visualization exercises for the psychological aspect of the disorder and physical rehabilitation. This physical component includes working on pitch, quality, breath support, and volume rate. Similar to stuttering, however, patients find that even with voice therapy, certain situations can cause the “tick” to reappear.
