1. The effects of oral topical
anesthesia on the
characteristics of voice
- Sergio Lorenzo Werling
- Andrea Lucio Pirani
Profesora Eva Maria Giner Larza

2. Introduction

The tone of our voice is a very distinctive tract of our personality,
and it affects our everyday life in many different ways, as we use it
to comunicate and to identify ourselves.
Aim

Oral topical anesthesia is used routinely before rigid laryngeal
endoscopy, bute we still don't know if this can cause changes in
voice quality. In this study, we are going to find whether oral topical
anesthesia changes voice quality.

3. Material & Methods

First of all, it was defined the sample of the patients: we chose adult
people from both sex, who required rigid laryngeal endoscopy as
part of the routine clinical. A total of 102 patients participated in the
study.

4. Matherial & Methods

The voices of the people participating in the study were recorded
before and after the sumministration of the following anesthetics:
Oral topical benzocaine (14%)
butamben (2%)
tetracaine (2%) (ie, cetacaine) spray

Consensus auditory perceptual evaluation of voice (CAPE-V)
protocol was used for the voice recordings and was the primary
outcome measure.

6. Matherial & Methods


The recordings were presented in a random way to two blinded
speech-language pathologists specialized in voice.
Secondary outcome measures were fundamental frequency (F0),
jitter, shimmer, and noise-to-harmonics ratio (N/H) on sustained /i/
and speaking F0.The

7. Results

The words colored in yellow are the factors calculated by the CAPE-V. There was
no significant difference in CAPE-V measurements before and after topical
anesthesia for all six attributes, and the same happened for other factors like
jitter, shimmer, N/H and speaking F0.
Overall severity
P= 0.145
Roughness
P= 0.214
Breathiness
P= 0.761
Strain
P= 0.053
Pitch
P= 0.301
Loudness
P= 0.320
Jitter
P= 0.315
Shimmer
P= 0.942
N/H
P=0.128

8. Conclusion


Although very little changes in the quality of voice were registered,
those changes were so little that they were defined as “ not
clinically significant”.
We can then affirm taht there were no clinically significant voice
changes after oral topical anesthesia.

9. Bibliography

“The Effect of Oral Topical Anesthesia on the Characteristics of
Voice” by Amanda Huemail, Jaime Eaglin Moore, Bridget Rose,
Stephanie Fort, Edward J. Gracely, Robert T. Sataloff