Correlation between the Arabic Pediatric Voice Related Quality of Life, the auditory perceptual assessment, and acoustic analysis of voice in dysphonic children

Authors

Abstract

Context
Dysphonia affects children's lives badly. An Arabic translation of Pediatric Voice Related Quality of Life (APVRQOL) was created. It is a reliable assessment questionnaire.
Aim
The aim was to determine the relationship among APVRQOL, subjective, and objective voice assessment in childhood dysphonia.
Settings and design
It is an observational case–control study.
Patients and methods
The study included 130 children divided into two groups: patient group: 65 dysphonic children and the control group: 65 children without vocal complaints. Auditory perceptual assessment of participant's voice and acoustic voice analysis was done in addition to an APVRQOL form to fill in.
Statistical analysis used
SPSS, version 20 was applied. Comparison tests were used: test for categorical data and independent-sample test for quantitative data. Correlation between the abnormally distributed data has been done by Spearman's correlation coefficient.
Results
The results showed that the control group has higher mean scores of all domains of APVRQOL than those of the patient group with more affected quality of life. Also, there was a significant negative correlation among the items of auditory perceptual assessment in addition to those of APVRQOL. Also, a significant negative correlation was observed between jitter and both the total APVRQOL and physical–functional domains.
Conclusions
APVRQOL form is an applicable tool for assessment of dysphonia's effect on quality of life of youngsters.

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