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78th Annual Meeting of the German Society of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology, Head and Neck Surgery

German Society of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology, Head and Neck Surgery

16.05. - 20.05.2007, Munich

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Graduation of the Voice Handicap Index VHI

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German Society of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology, Head and Neck Surgery. 78th Annual Meeting of the German Society of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology, Head and Neck Surgery. Munich, 16.-20.05.2007. Düsseldorf, Köln: German Medical Science; 2007. Doc07hno094

The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.egms.de/en/meetings/hno2007/07hno094.shtml

Published: August 8, 2007

© 2007 Rosanowski et al.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.en). You are free: to Share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work, provided the original author and source are credited.

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Although the Voice Handicap Index VHI questionnaire is regarded as the gold standard for measuring voice handicap there exists no recommendation how to graduate the VHI score. In this study, the VHI was graduated against the background of health related quality of life and VHI data obtained from non dysphonic persons. 101 patients, 61 women and 40 men aged 48,4 ± 14,6 years suffering from dysphonia of benign origin competed both a German version of the VHI and the SF-36 Health Survey after informed consent. As the SF-36 subscale on physical health was significantly reduced in dysphonic patients its results were used as external criterion for the graduation of the VHI results. Hence, data suggest four degrees of severity of the voice handicap: VHI-values of 0-11 can be classified as “Grade 0”, values of 12-28 as “Grade 1”, values of 29-56 as “Grade 2” and VHI-values of 57-120 as “Grade 3”.