Voice disorders in persons with Parkinson's disease: Characteristics, assessment, and treatment

Abstract

Parkinson's disease is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that is primarily manifested by impairment of motor skills and speech. Although voice disorders characterize the speech of people with Parkinson's disease, they are still not sufficiently clarified from the clinical point of view. With that in mind, the aim of this paper is to present voice characteristics in Parkinson's disease, as well as assessment and treatment methods, based on a review of the available literature. The search of relevant literature was based on databases of scientific research works PubMed, KoBSON, Science Direct, Google Scholar, as well as works available in paper version. Papers published from 2000 until today dedicated to voice disorders in people with Parkinson's disease were analyzed. The results show that voice disorders occur within the clinical picture of Parkinson's disease and that the symptoms progress with the progression of the disease. The basic characteristics of the voice are monotony, hypophonia and hoarseness. Due to the great impact of voice disorders on speech intelligibility, different methods of speech therapy are used in treatment of these patients. Lee Silverman's method is the best known and the most effective method of phonation and respiration rehabilitation in people with Parkinson's disease. Based on a review and analysis of the available literature, it is evident that voice disorders are one of the significant symptoms of this disease, and that speech therapy assessment and voice treatment are essential elements of the rehabilitation of these patients.