Acoustic and Auditory-Perceptual Analysis of Voice in the Female Smokers Who Do Not Have Self-Reported Voice Complaint

Abstract

Objectives: Smoking affects the voice quality and the previous studies presented higher Voice Handicap Index (VHI) scores, and abnormal acoustic data in smokers. However, there is no study revealing any voice parameter indicating incipient damage in voice functionality. The studies documented that the adverse effects of smoking on phonatory function were higher in females than males and further the prevalence of smoking among females tends to increase. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of smoking on the acoustic and auditory-perceptual analysis of the speaking voice in female smokers who scored the VHI-10 scale as grade 0 (absent), and thus to look for a criterion for incipient vocal damage of smoking.

Methods: The study group composed of 22 female smokers and 22 female nonsmokers between the ages of 18 and 55 years. The acoustic parameters (mean F0, jitter local [%], jitter local abs, jitter rap, jitter ppq, shimmer local [%], shimmer local [dB], shimmer apq3, shimmer apq5, shimmer apq11, and mean HNR) and the GRBAS scale were analyzed in all subjects.

Results: No significant difference observed between the smoker and nonsmokers groups in acoustic voice analysis. It was seen that the smokers presented a small but significant increase in the Strain parameter of the GRBAS scale while there was no significant difference in the Grade, Roughness, Breathiness, and Asthenia parameters between the study groups.

Conclusion: The results of this study indicate that increase in Strain could be considered as an early data in the smokers without voice complaints. However, our data declared that conventional acoustic perturbation analysis did not reveal incipient Strain in voice.

Keywords: Acoustic analysis; Perceptual analysis; Smoking; Voice handicap index; Voice quality.