Acoustic voice assessment in Parkinson's disease patients submitted to posteroventral pallidotomy

Abstract

Long-term complications in levodopa treated Parkinson's disease (PD) patients caused a resurgence of interest in pallidotomy as an option of treatment. However, postoperative complications such as speech disorders can occur. Purpose: The aim of this study is to evaluate the acoustic voice in PD patients, before and after posteroventral pallidotomy. Method: Twelve patients with PD were submitted to neurological and voice assessments during the off and on phases, in the pre-operative, 1st and 3rd post-operative months. The patients were evaluated with the UPDRS and the vocal acoustic parameters - f0, NHR, jitter, PPQ, Shimmer, APQ (using the software MultiSpeech - Kay Elemetrics - 3700). Results: The off phase UPDRS scores revealed a tendency to improvement at the 1st month and the off phase worsened. The shimmer and APQ improved. Conclusion: This study shows that pallidotomy has little improvement on functional use of communication of PD patients.