Clinical Voice Outcomes for Two Types of Voice Rest after Phonomicrosurgery

Voice rest (VR) is commonly recommended for patients following phonomicrosurgery. However, the growing body of voice rest literature has yet to identify the optimal type and duration of postsurgical voice rest programs. The current randomized prospective study compared the clinical outcomes of two different 7-day voice rest programs, complete voice rest (CVR) and relative voice rest (RVR), for patients with benign vocal fold lesions who received phonomicrosurgery. The outcomes were across three time points: pre-operation, 7-day post-operation, and 1-month post-operation. We hypothesized patients of the RVR group would have better clinical outcomes than patients of the CVR group across the time points. The clinical outcomes covered the acoustic, the aerodynamic, auditory-perceptual measurement (Consensus Auditory-Perceptual Evaluation of Voice), and patient-reported outcomes (Voice Handicap Index). The mixed model analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed for analysis. While our results indicated no between-group differences, both groups demonstrated statistically significant improvement as reflected by the subglottal pressure, the overall severity ratings of CAPE-V, and the total scores of VHI. In addition, our results indicated that clinical outcomes did not differ by the type of voice rest program when the duration of the program was seven days.