Immediate Effects of the Finnish Resonance Tube Method on Behavioral Dysphonia

Objective To investigate the immediate effects of the Finnish resonance tube method for teachers with behavioral dysphonia. Methods Twenty-five female teachers (mآ =آ 39.9 years of age) with at least a 5-year history of dysphonia were included. Additional inclusion criteria were the diagnosis of chronic behavioral dysphonia with an indication for speech therapy and the absence of any prior speech therapy. Subjects produced three sets of 10 tokens of sustained phonation with a 1-minute rest interval between tokens into a 27-cm glass tube immersed in at least 2آ cm of water. Voice samples were recorded before and after these sets. The effects of these exercises were evaluated by self-assessment, auditory perceptual analysis, and acoustic evaluation involving extraction of fundamental frequency and visual spectrographic analysis. Results Sixty-eight percent of the teachers reported increased phonatory comfort and 52% reported improved voice quality after performing the exercises. Perceptual analysis indicated improved voice quality in the samples of counting numbers, confirmed by decreased instability, subharmonics, noise in high frequencies, and the tendency for reduced low frequency noise on spectrographic evaluation. Additionally, mean fundamental frequency decreased. Conclusion The Finnish resonance tube method increased phonatory comfort and vocal changes suggestive diminished hyperfunction.