Vocal dose in teachers: correlation with dysphonia.

Teachers are professionals with high prevalence of dysphonia, whose main risk factors are the large work hours in classrooms with the presence of background noise. The purpose of the study was to calculate the phonation time and the cycle dose of teachers with dysphonia and teachers without voice disorders during the class. There were two groups analyzed: five teachers with functional dysphonia were the first group and five teachers without voice disorders were the second group. For the data was used the VoxLog® dosimeter and the parameters were: intensity; fundamental frequency; phonation time and cycle dose. The statistical analysis used ANOVA, Student's T-test, and Kruskal-Wallis test. Dysphonic teachers showed major values of phonation time and cycle dose compared with teachers without voice disorders. The dysphonia is related to extended period of speech time and greater exposure of the tissue of the vocal fold to phonotrauma.