'Jeg taber pusten, når jeg taler' Et effektstudie af injektionsbehandling af personer med unilateral recurrensparese undersøgt med temporale pause- og talemål.: Et effektstudie af injektionsbehandling af personer med unilateral recurrensparese undersøgt med temporale pause- og talemål.

Objective: The main purpose of this study was to examine the development regarding objective parameters of pause- and speech measures in patients with unilateral vocal fold paralysis after injection treatment. Furthermore, this thesis examines the development regarding maximum phonation time (MPT) and Voice Handicap Index (VHI) scores after injection treatment and relates these findings to the measures of pause and speech. Method: This thesis is a retrospective study based on voice recordings from 24 patients with unilateral vocal fold paralysis, recorded at the hospital Sjællands Universitetssygehus before and after injection with RenuVoice in local anaesthetics. Furthermore VHI score was collected before and after treatment. In this thesis the voice recordings were analyzed in the computer base programme Praat, and statistics were calculated in the computer based programme R-Comander. The examined measures of pauses were number of pauses, average pause length in milliseconds, and the pause ratio that expresses the amount used on pausing during an reading aloud task. The examined measures of breath groups were number of breath groups, average length of breath group in seconds, articulation speed in segments per second and speaking rate in segments per seconds. MPT was also determined based on spectral information in Praat. Results: The main results of this thesis is that injection treatment has an effect on the pause measures, pause frequency and pause ratio, and on all speech measures. The only measure that did not show significant improvement with injection treatment was pause length. Furthermore, injection treatment showed effect on MPT and VHI. The participant with shortest MPT preinjection experienced the largest and most significant effect of injection treatment on pause- and speech measures. MPT correlated with several pause- and speech measures, whereas we did not find any correlation between VHI and any of the examined measures. Conclusion