Treatment of voice disorders in professional singers

Abstract

The optimal care of professional singers with a vocal emergency should be provided in those institutions where a full clinical voice evaluation and laryngeal examination including videostroboscopy can be performed. The purpose of this article is to design a guide for the treatment of professional singers with acute vocal problems. At the same time, we reported and examined statistically our cases suffering from voice disorder due to acute inflammation from January through December 2010 at Tokyo Voice Center. Medication, voice therapy and nebulizer are the essential treatment for professional singers. Appropriate antibiotics should be prescribed if bacterial infection is clinically suspected. For vocal fold edema, steroids can be used to overcome the edema effectively and facilitate performances in acute settings. Among several methods for administering steroids, intravenous steroids, oral steroids or inhaled steroids should be considered, depending on the severity of the edema. A total of 176 patients were involved in this study and 56 (31.8%) were professional singers. Inhaled steroids were prescribed for 37 singers (66.1%), intravenous steroids for 8 (14.3%) and oral steroids for 7 (12.5%). Stroboscopic findings were considered to be very important, and severe vocal fold edema should be treated with intravenous steroids first, followed by oral steroids.