Lee Silverman voice treatment can improve the speech and the life quality of patients with Parkinson'sdisease / 中华物理医学与康复杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To explore the effect of Lee Silverman voice treatment on the speech and life quality of Parkinson's disease patients.Methods A total of 98 patients with Parkinson's disease anddifferent degrees of speech disorder (Hoehn-Yahr clinical stages 1 to 3) were randomly divided into an intervention group and a control group,each of 49,according to a random number table.The control group was given routine speech therapy covering tongue and lip movement,rhythm,sound,volume,speed and respiratory control.The intervention group was provided with 12 weeks of Lee Silverman voice treatment aimed at abnormal voice and emphasizing pronunciation,4 times a week and 1 hour each time.During the treatment,all patients were required to practice once at home on treatment days and twice on days without treatment.The voice handicap index (VHI),the western aphasia battery (WAB),the speech function portion of UPDRS-Ⅲ and the speech articulation assesstnent were used to evaluate the 2 groups before and after the 12 weeks ofintervention.Results Beforethe intervention there was no significant differencebetween the two groups in any of the measurements.After the interventionsignificant improvement was ohserved in all of these indicesin bothgroups.After treatment the average total VHI score of the intervention group (60.39±9.84) had improved significantly more than that of the control group,as did the WAB score for spontaneous speech (14.64±1.98),listening comprehension (112.67± 19.43),repeating (65.31±7.98),Name (39.89±9.84) and the average AQ scores (69.19±10.78) and UPDRS-scores [(1.39±0.61)] [of the intervention group than the control group [(71.03±11.01),(13.67±1.06),(111.53±29.61),(63.75±7.41),(37.89± 9.29),(62.14±10.21) and (1.82±0.82)].After the intervention,the average speech articulation scores of the intervention and control group were (77.61± 11.72) and (59.67± 10.04),significantly higher than those before the intervention [(54.36±10.71) and (53.98±9.92)],with the improveinent of the intervention group significantly higher than the control group.Conclusion Lee Silverman voice treatment can effectively improve the speech and life quality of patients with Parkinson's disease.