RESUMO
Voice disorders are thought to be one of the major occupational hazards of school teaching. There is a need to study the prevalence of vocal fatigue in school teachers as it is unknown in Indian population and its awareness is at a very basic level. We aim to investigate percentage of school teachers reporting vocal fatigue and to find if there is any relationship between vocal fatigue and acoustic voice parameters. A total of 100 subjects (50-males and 50-females) in the age range of 25-35 years participated in the study. Voice Sample was obtained from the subject using a digital tape recorder and was analyzed in Visi pitch and Dr.Speech softwares. The sample was taken twice in a day, that is, before teaching and after teaching. The mean values obtained on all the questions of the vocal fatigue questionnaire show a significant increase in mean values on all the questions at post teaching ratings. Results revealed a statistically significant difference in pre and post teaching values of F0 and shimmer in males. In females, statistical significant difference was obtained in Noise to Harmonic Ratio in /u/ production. No significant correlation between acoustic parameters and overall vocal fatigue was found except for Noise to Harmonic ratio in females for /u/.
