Effect of Non-face-to-face Voice Therapy Using the Self-Voice Health Care Program for Vocal fatigue

Abstract

Objectives: Covid-19 has increased the need for non-face-to-face treatment. In particular, professional voice users have a high risk of voice disease due to continuous voice use. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of the Self-Voice Health Care Program (SVHCP) which was developed on the basis of Korean speech-language pathologist’s vocal behaviors, status and vocal fatigue.Methods: Fifteen speech-language pathologists (2 males and 13 females, the average age was 31.19 years) with voice problems who have more than 25 sessions per week participated via an experimental recruitment SMS and posting from the online speech-language pathologists internet community. Participants watched a 5-minute SVHCP video with instructions and carried out SVHCP daily for one week. The voice measures were carried out before and after SVHCP.Results: K-VHI-10 (<i>p</i>= .017), K-VFI-fatigue (<i>p</i>= .004), K-VFI-physical (<i>p</i>= .019), K-VFI-rest (<i>p</i>= .003), K-VFI-total (<i>p</i>= .005) and total subjective vocal symptoms (<i>p</i>= .009) were significantly lower than before. Additionally, among the subjective vocal symptoms, hypertension when speaking (<i>p</i>= .007), roughness when speaking (<i>p</i>= .007), pain when speaking (<i>p</i>= .034), difficulty with high pitch when singing (<i>p</i>= .017), feelings of voice fatigue (<i>p</i>= .017) were significantly lower than before.Conclusion: Our outcomes demonstrated that the SVHCP was effective in reducing vocal fatigue and subjective vocal symptoms. The SVHCP can help improve voice-related quality of life and voice health for professional voice users. Further research is needed in conjunction with the IT field for the utilization of the SVHCP.