Clinical, socio-demographic and occupational characteristics of teachers with dysphonia

Abstract

Objectives: Present the sociodemographic, occupational, health and vocal characteristics of teachers with dysphonia from Municipal School. Methods: A descriptive study of the characteristics of teachers with dysphonia realized between August 2008 and November 2009. We collected data regarding sociodemographic characteristics, work organization, work environment, vocal habits, health and vocal assessment using a form specifically developed for the research. Results: Average age of participants was 41.5 years. About work organization, the teachers taught, as an average, for 14.6 years, with an average of 31.1 hours of classes weekly. The break between classes mostly lasted less than 20 minutes (64.6%). Average number of students in the classroom was 26.54. As for the workplace, 47.9% of teachers felt the noise in the classroom or workplace nuisance. Air quality in the classroom or the workplace was rated as nuisance by 27.2%. About the vocal habits, 60.8% reported “speak a lot” daily and 11.9% reported drinking less than 1 liter of water per day. As for vocal assessment, 91% of teachers reported proprioceptive symptoms related to the voice use and there was presence of vocal fold lesion in 62.7%. Conclusions: The group of teachers is homogeneous in relation to the outcome and seems to be very homogeneous with regard to the previous exposure to the risk factors mentioned by epidemiologic studies, with the exception of the length of service.