Asiaee M, Vahedian-Azimi A, Atashi SS, Keramatfar A, Nourbakhsh M. Voice Quality Evaluation in Patients With COVID-19: An Acoustic Analysis.
J Voice 2020;
36:879.e13-879.e19. [PMID:
33051108 PMCID:
PMC7528943 DOI:
10.1016/j.jvoice.2020.09.024]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 36] [Impact Index Per Article: 9.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/02/2020] [Revised: 09/26/2020] [Accepted: 09/29/2020] [Indexed: 01/19/2023]
Abstract
Objectives
With the COVID-19 outbreak around the globe and its potential effect on infected patients’ voice, this study set out to evaluate and compare the acoustic parameters of voice between healthy and infected people in an objective manner.
Methods
Voice samples of 64 COVID-19 patients and 70 healthy Persian speakers who produced a sustained vowel /a/ were evaluated. Between-group comparisons of the data were performed using the two-way ANOVA and Wilcoxon's rank-sum test.
Results
The results revealed significant differences in CPP, HNR, H1H2, F0SD, jitter, shimmer, and MPT values between COVID-19 patients and the healthy participants. There were also significant differences between the male and female participants in all the acoustic parameters, except jitter, shimmer and MPT. No interaction was observed between gender and health status in any of the acoustic parameters.
Conclusion
The statistical analysis of the data revealed significant differences between the experimental and control groups in this study. Changes in the acoustic parameters of voice are caused by the insufficient airflow, and increased aperiodicity, irregularity, signal perturbation and level of noise, which are the consequences of pulmonary and laryngological involvements in patients with COVID-19.
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