Monitoring the Outcome of Phonosurgery and Vocal Exercises with Established and New Diagnostic Tools.

Instrument-assisted measuring procedures expand the options within phoniatric diagnostics by quantifying the condition of the voice. The aim of this study was to examine objective treatment-associated changes of the recently developed vocal extent measure (VEM) and the established dysphonia severity index (DSI) in relation to subjective tools, i.e., self-evaluation via voice handicap index (VHI-12) and external evaluation via auditory-perceptual assessment of hoarseness (). The findings for (3 raters' group assessment), VHI-12, DSI, and VEM in 152 patients of both sexes (age range 16-75 years), taken before and 3 months after phonosurgery or vocal exercises, were compared and correlated. Posttherapeutically, all of the recorded parameters improved ( < 0.001). The degree of reduced on average by 0.5, the VHI-12 score sank by 5 points, while DSI and VEM rose by 1.5 and 19, respectively. The correlations of these changes were significant but showed gradual differences between and VHI-12 ( = 0.3), and DSI ( = -0.3), and and VEM ( = -0.4). We conclude that all investigated parameters are adequate to verify therapeutic outcomes but represent different dimensions of the voice. However, changes in the degree of as gold standard were best recognized with the new VEM.