Sulcus vocalis: achieving balancee through the therapeutic process

Abstract

This paper describes and discusses the therapeutic process of a 30-year-old teacher with sulcus vocalis. The initial complaint was of getting tired when talking, painful and burning throat after classes, persisting for a year after he increased the number of classes given. On the first vocal evaluation, this teacher has presented voice changes, bitonal voice, with visible vocal effort on voice use and bad vocal functioning, fixed in a single manner for any situation of voice use. By means of vocal techniques and the way in which the patient responded to them and was able to modify his use of the voice, the voice therapy provided conditions to test several different modes of vocal functioning until the discovery of the most efficient, balanced and comfortable mode for him. In this case, the voice therapy was of fundamental importance to modify the patient’s use of voice, which wasn’t appropriate to his vocal demand. By the end of the treatment, the vocal quality was still considered limited, with vocal characteristics which, from the auditory standpoint, did not give the impression of a voice without deviation, but of an adopted voice with certain roughness and high pitch. Nevertheless, the patient presented an improvement on his voice with a balanced vocal functioning and a controlled vocal behavior, being able to comply satisfactorily with several vocal requirements.