Vocal Auditory Perceptual and Acoustic Measures, Vocal Complaints and Professional Characteristics of Teachers at Santa Maria city/RS, Brazil

Introduction: Among the numerous instruments of labor, a class is notable for using voice for the labor exercise, the professional voice users, of which among the best known is the teacher who has the highest incidence the voice disorders of occupational order.

Objective: This study aims to describe and correlate the vocal auditory perceptual and acoustic measures, vocal complaints, and professional characteristics of professors at Santa Maria (RS/Brazil).

Methods: A total of 99 women, aged 20 to 66 years, primary school professors held auditory perceptual evaluation of voice (CAPE-V) and acoustic (multidimensional voice program advanced), and answered a questionnaire containing data identification, overall health, and occupational vocal complaints. The patients underwent statistical tests analysis of variance and Pearson correlation.

Results: The daily average performance was of 6.98 hours for 12.91 years, most vocal complaints presented (74.7%) and belonged to private school network (50.5%). The auditory perceptual parameters were normal, all measures of jitter, shimmer, deaf segments or unvoiced, and subharmonics showed earlier the normal range, as well as standard deviation of fundamental frequency and soft phonation index. It was observed positive correlation between disturbance frequency and age, roughness, breathiness, and overall degree of voice with age and profession time, and a negative correlation between amplitude disturbance and daily voice used.

Conclusion: The professor's voice was considered normal for the auditory perceptual evaluation, but there was noise detection and instability in acoustic analysis, with predominance of vocal complaints, as well as alteration of auditory perceptual and acoustic measures with increasing age and profession time.

Keywords: voice disorders, voice quality, occupation health.