The impact of hormone therapy on vocal quality in postmenopausal women.

OBJECTIVES: The main purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of hormone therapy (HT) on vocal characteristics in postmenopausal women by comparing postmenopausal women with HT (n=59) and postmenopausal women without HT (n=46). The second purpose was to investigate the differences in vocal characteristics between two types of HT: estrogen therapy (ET) and estrogen-progestogen therapy (E-PT).

METHODS: To determine the vocal characteristics in both groups, objective (aerodynamic measurements, vocal range measurements, acoustic analysis, and a determination of the dysphonia severity index) and subjective assessment techniques (perceptual evaluation, videostroboscopic evaluation, and voice handicap index) were used.

RESULTS: The postmenopausal women without HT showed a significantly lower speaking fundamental frequency and were able to phonate lower compared with postmenopausal women with HT. No differences in vocal characteristics were found between postmenopausal women with ET and postmenopausal women with E-PT.

CONCLUSION: HT seems to counteract the vocal changes caused by menopause. The type of HT did not affect the outcome in this study.