[Endoscopic diagnostics of voice disorders in breastfed and young children].

The objective of the present work was to study the prevalence, etiology, and semiotics of lesions in the acoustic apparatus. The secondary objectives were to estimate the informative and diagnostic value of various methods for the assessment of the state of the vocal apparatus (rigid endoscopy, fibroscopy, stroboscopy, and acoustic analysis of the voice) and to evaluate the prospects for their use in clinical practice. Moreover, the study was aimed at the development of an optimal therapeutic and diagnostic algorithm for the breastfeeding and young children suffering voice disturbances. The study included a total of 188 children aged from 4 days to 3 years presenting with the altered quality of voice who were examined using the clinical and instrumental methods for the estimation of the state of the larynx (rigid endoscopy, fibroscopy, and acoustic analysis of the voice) in combination with the modern computer-assisted technologies for the recording and processing of video images. It was found that disturbances of vocalization formation in the overwhelming majority of breastfeeding and young children (95.7%) can be attributed to dysphonia. Laryngeal pathology is most frequently diagnosed during the first year of life (28.2%). The leading cause of laryngeal lesions is inflammatory diseases (56.4%) followed by congenital malformations (25%).