Evelien D'haeseleer

Ghent University | UGhent · Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences

Background Although psychological factors have been implicated in patients with functional dysphonia (FD), conventional voice therapy (CVT) typically targets the aberrant voice symptoms exclusively. Yet, CVT is not always successful, and in view of the significant adverse quality of life impact combined with the financial burden on the healthcare s...

Objective: Unilateral vocal fold paralysis (UVFP) is often characterized by severe dysphonia and has a significant impact on a patient’s communication in daily and vocational situations. Having a better understanding of how UVFP influences quality of life and patient experiences can help improve patient-centered care in this population. Therefore,...

Introduction: Due to the heterogeneity in language trajectories and differences in language exposure, a lot of bilingual children could use extra support for the acquisition of the school language to reduce the risk of language problems and learning difficulties. Enhancing bilingual children's narrative abilities in the school language could be an...

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to 1) describe the age- and sex-specific occurrence of laryngeal pathologies in a treatment-seeking pediatric population in the voice unit of Ghent University Hospital, Belgium, and 2) describe this population in terms of vocal parameters, vocal complaints, influencing factors, and treatment history and re...

Introduction: Providing an adapted language input in a multicultural classroom is often challenging to educators. Teachers are frequently the parents' first contacts for language counselling and educational support, and therefore, they may influence the language exposure not only in the classroom but at home as well. This study aims to investigate...

Purpose: Unilateral vocal fold paralysis (UVFP) is a neurological voice disorder that is often first treated by a speech-language pathologist (SLP). In literature, little consensus is found regarding voice therapy onset, duration, frequency, and content. The aim of the current study is to investigate the clinical practice of SLPs for treatment of U...

Introduction Semi-occluded vocal tract exercises (SOVTEs) are frequently used exercises in voice therapy. An important shortcoming to most SOVTEs is the inability to include continuous speech in these exercises. A variation of water-resistance therapy (WRT), during which a patient phonates through a resonance tube ending in water, was developed to...

Purpose: This study investigates the short- and longer-term effects of glottoplasty up to six months after surgery on acoustic voice parameters, listener perceptions, and client's satisfaction in trans women. Secondly, the impact of chondrolaryngoplasty and voice therapy on the glottopasty outcomes was investigated. Method: A prospective longitu...

Objectives/hypothesis: Although intonation is often addressed in speech training for gender diverse individuals, the relationship between intonation and femininity/masculinity ratings remains unclear. The aim of this study was to examine differences in intonation parameters in gender diverse individuals. Moreover, the relationship between acoustic...

Background and aims: Individuals with speech disorders are often judged more negatively than peers without speech disorders. A limited number of studies examined the attitudes of adolescents toward peers with speech disorders due to a cleft lip with or without cleft of the palate (CL ± P). Therefore, the aim of the present study was to investigate...

Background. Even though evidence for the use of linguistic-phonological intervention approaches in children with a cleft (lip and) palate (CP±L) is still limited, these approaches are being used by speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to treat active or compensatory cleft speech disorders in clinical practice. It is, however, unknown to what extent...

Purpose Bilateral vocal fold paralysis (BVFP) is a severe disorder that can result in respiratory, swallowing, and voice-related problems. Most surgical treatments do not restore laryngeal function and often need to compromise voice quality to preserve respiratory function. Laryngeal reinnervation (LR) may offer a solution to this problem, but lite...

Background. A promising way to obtain vocal economy and efficiency is by semi-occluding the vocal tract while phonating. Current knowledge about the immediate effects of semi-occluded vocal tract (SOVT) phonation on the laryngeal function and configuration is based mainly on computer modeling or excised larynges studies. In in vivo SOVT studies, el...

Purpose This study measured and compared the acoustic short-term effects of pitch elevation training (PET) and articulation-resonance training (ART) and the combination of both programs, in transgender women. Method A randomized controlled study with cross-over design was used. Thirty transgender women were included and received 14 weeks of speech...

This study investigated the experiences of transgender women after following sessions for speech feminization using semi-structured face-to-face interviews. Transgender women who completed a clinical trial were invited for an interview and 12 accepted the invitation. Interviews were conducted using an interview guide and were recorded and transcrib...

Objectves The Evaluation of the Ability to Sing Easily (EASE) is a self-rating tool that is used to assess the singer's perceptions of the current singing voice status. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a Dutch translation of the EASE. Methods The original version of the EASE was translated and adapted to Dutch according to the...

Background The voice use of choir singers is understudied despite the imbalance of high vocal demands versus low vocal education, and consequently increased risk for voice problems. Also, there is a lack of information on the effects of a performance on choristers’ voices. Available studies included performances of at least one hour. To date, no st...

Objective: The objectives of this study were to investigate (1) the knowledge of primary school teachers regarding voice and voice disorders, (2) the primary school teacher’s ability to identify and refer a dysphonic child to a speech-language pathologist (SLP), and (3) potential contributing factors that might affect this ability. Method and mat...

Objective: People with dysphonia are judged more negatively than peers with normal vocal quality. This preliminary study aims to (1) investigate correlations between both auditory-perceptual and objective measures of vocal quality of dysphonic and non-dysphonic speakers and attitudes of listeners, and (2) discover whether these attitudes towards p...

Background: Vocal fold nodules (VFNs) are the main cause of paediatric dysphonia. Voice therapy is recommended as the preferable treatment option for VFNs in children. Aim: The aim of this systematic review is to provide an overview of the existing literature concerning the effects of voice therapy in children with VFNs. Methods & procedures:...

Objectives Voice-related quality of life (Qol) questionnaires provide the clinician with information regarding the impact of voice disorders on the patient's well-being. The available voice-related QoL tools for Dutch-speaking children are parent-proxy in nature. However, the use of proxy measurements has been debated in the literature. The Childre...

Introduction: Children born with cleft palate with or without cleft lip (CP±L) tend to use less oral pressure consonants and more glottal sounds in their babbling. The purpose of very early palatal repair (i.e., one-stage palatal closure prior to 6 months of age) is to make the palate functional before the onset of speech acquisition to reduce the...

Purpose: This study investigated whether intonation is influenced by age and gender and obtained normative data for the intonation of Flemish (Belgian Dutch) speaking cis women and cis men in Flanders, Belgium, per age group. Method: A total of 105 cis women and 102 cis men were included and equally spread in five age groups by gender. Semi-stru...

Purpose The first purpose of this study was to investigate and compare the short-term effects after a semi-occluded vocal tract (SOVT) therapy session consisting of straw phonation (SP) in air or water on vocal fold vibration and supraglottic activity of adult patients with voice disorders, visualized with strobovideolaryngoscopy (SVL). The second...

Purpose: This study measured the impact of articulation exercises using a cork and articulation exercises for lip spreading on the formant frequencies of vowels and listener perceptions of femininity in transgender women. Methods: Thirteen transgender women were recorded before and after the cork exercise and before and after the lip spreading e...

Objective. To investigate the impact of living with a cleft lip and/or cleft palate (CL/P) on sociodemographic variables, quality of life, esthetics, life satisfaction, and social distress in Dutch-speaking adolescents and adults. Design. Cross-sectional study. Participants. Thirty Dutch-speaking participants with a CL/P with a mean age of 26.93 ye...

Background: For transgender women, communication and speech characteristics might not be congruent with their gender expressions. This can have a major influence on their psychosocial functioning. Higher quality of life scores were observed the more their voice was perceived as feminine. Speech language pathologists may play an important role in th...

Purpose. The purpose of this study was to compare the effect of speech intervention provided with a low intensity with speech intervention provided with a high intensity on the speech and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in Dutch-speaking children with a cleft palate with or without a cleft lip (CP±L) between 4 and 12 years. Methods. A longit...

Purpose This study investigates the long-term voice outcome of thyroidectomy up to 10 years after the surgery using a longitudinal prospective study design. Methods Eighteen participants (6 men and 12 women, mean age: 54 years) who underwent a thyroidectomy between September 2006 and May 2007 were included in this study. A voice assessment protoco...

Aims: This study investigated the occurrence of speech-language disorders during the acute phase of recovery in children with acquired brain injury (ABI) with an age between 0 and 16 years. Methods: A retrospective chart analysis was performed including 228 children (n=118 boys, n=110 girls) who consecutively presented with ABI over a 10-year peri...

Purpose. This study compared the inter- and intra-rater reliability of the percentage consonants correct metrics (PCC) and the probe scoring system between an experienced and a less experienced rater and between two experienced raters. In addition, these outcome measures’ ability to reflect changes following speech intervention was measured. Metho...

Background. To date, there seems to be no consensus on the long-term quality of life outcomes in patients living with a cleft of the lip and/or palate (CL/P) with regard to well-being and functioning. Some studies report a substantial influence of having a cleft while other studies report no influence of living with a cleft. The purpose of this stu...

This study examines the Dutch intelligibility of a group of monolingual Dutch and bilingual Turkish-Dutch preschool children in Flanders, as rated by native Dutch listeners and measured by a Dutch intelligibility test. The intelligibility of the bilingual children is compared to that of the monolingual Dutch children, in order to examine whether ag...

Objective To provide speech outcomes of English-speaking Ugandan patients with a cleft palate with or without cleft lip (CP±L). Design Prospective case–control study. Setting Referral hospital for patients with cleft lip and palate in Uganda. Participants Twenty-four English-speaking Ugandan children with a CP±L (15 boys, 9 girls, mean 8.4 years...

Purpose. The purpose of this study was to compare the effect of two different speech therapy approaches, a traditional motor-phonetic approach and a linguistic-phonological approach, on the speech and health-related quality of life in Dutch-speaking children with a cleft palate with or without a cleft lip (CP±L) between 4 and 12 years old. Methods...

Purpose The purpose of this study was to measure and compare the voice characteristics and vocal complaints and habits of musical theater actors and musical theater students. Method Thirty participants were included in the study, 18 musical theater students and 12 professional musical theater actors. Vocal quality was measured by the multiparamete...

Introduction To meet the scarcity of training and/or educational initiatives in Uganda regarding state-of-the-art speech diagnosis and treatment in patients with cleft palate, a workshop was organized for all interested speech-language pathologists and health-care workers. Objective To evaluate and compare the inter- and intra-rater reliability of...

State of the art Theater actors are a high risk group for developing voice disorders. Aims The first purpose of this study was to examine and compare the objective and subjective vocal quality between professional theater actors, non-professional theater actors and a control group of professional dancers. Secondly, the impact of one theater perfor...

Objectives: workshops and specialized training programs are often inaccessible for speech and language pathologists (SLPs) based in resource-limited countries given the lack of supply, the long travel distances and the excessive participation fees. To stimulate life-long learning opportunities for all, this study described and measured the effect o...

Background/aims: There is a lack of studies investigating articulation skills in bilingual children with a migration background. Therefore, the present study compared articulation skills in bilingual Turkish-Dutch/Moroccan Arabic-Dutch children with migration background and monolingual Dutch children without migration background. Moreover, possible...

Purpose The purpose of this study was to compare the voice patient's opinion regarding three service delivery models for voice therapy: a short-term intensive voice therapy with individual sessions (IVT-I), a short-term intensive voice therapy with group sessions (IVT-G), or a long-term traditional voice therapy with individual sessions (TVT). Met...

Introduction: In the current literature, there is a well-established necessity for the improvement of bilingual language diagnostics. Nowadays, the majority of clinicians in Belgium still rely on standardized tests with monolingual norm samples. It is therefore fundamental to have a detailed knowledge of the performance of bilingual children on th...

Background Traditional semi-occluded vocal tract exercises (SOVTEs) are restricted to single-phoneme tasks due to the semi-occlusion at the mouth, which hinders full articulation, continuous speech, and singing. Innovative SOVTEs should overcome this limitation by creating the semi-occlusion outside the oral cavity. Purpose The purpose of this stu...

Objective: To develop and validate a Belgian Dutch outcome tool for the perceptual evaluation of speech in patients with cleft palate. Setting: Cleft palate team in a tertiary university hospital. Methods: The tool was based on the Cleft Audit Protocol for Speech–Augmented (John et al., 2006; Sell et al., 2009), with adaptations to some of the sp...

Background and aims. Studies evaluating health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in patients with cleft palate living in resource-limited countries such as Uganda are scarce. The VELO questionnaire evaluates the impact of speech (and swallowing) difficulties on the patient’s HRQoL. The aim was to evaluate an adapted English version of the VELO questi...

Background/aims: In resource-limited countries, traditional models for speech therapy delivery are not adequate to reach all patients in need. In those countries, intensive speech therapy might be a solution. Preliminary results of previous research demonstrated that intensive speech therapy can be effective in the short term for patients living i...

Background To date, the immediate effects of a semi‐occluded vocal tract (SOVT) configuration have been thoroughly demonstrated. However, it is not yet sufficiently confirmed whether a therapy programme (i.e. longer than one session) using SOVT exercises leads to an enhanced phonation and improved vocal quality. Aims The aim of this study was to i...

Objectives: Laryngeal palpation is a routine clinical method for evaluation of patients with muscle tension dysphonia (MTD). The aim of this study was to develop a new comprehensive valid and reliable "laryngeal palpatory scale" (LPS), based on psychometric criteria. Methods: The scale items were selected based on an in-depth analysis of the lit...

Purpose The aim of this study was to compare the effect of a short-term intensive voice therapy (IVT) with a long-term traditional voice therapy (TVT) on the vocal quality, vocal capacities, psychosocial impact, vocal tract discomfort, laryngological anatomy/physiology, and session attendance of patients with dysphonia. An additional comparison was...

This pilot study evaluated the usability of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to detect brain activation during phonation in healthy female singers with supraglottic compression. Four healthy female classical singers (mean age: 26 years) participated in the study. All subjects had normal vocal folds and vocal characteristics and showed s...

Background: In contrast with most medical and pharmaceutical therapies, the optimal dosage for voice therapy or training is unknown. Aims: The aim of this study was to compare the effect of a short-term intensive voice training (IVT) with a longer-term traditional voice training (TVT) on the vocal quality and vocal capacities of vocally healthy...

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the short-term effect of 2 semi-occluded vocal tract training programs, "resonant voice training using nasal consonants" versus "straw phonation," on the vocal quality of vocally healthy future occupational voice users. Method: A multigroup pretest-posttest randomized control group design was u...

Aims: Unrepaired clefts still regularly occur in resource-poor countries as a result of limited health-care access. The purpose of the present study was to report resonance, airflow and articulation characteristics following delayed (≥8years) primary palatal closure. Methods: Fifteen Ugandan participants with cleft (lip and) palate (CP±L) were i...

Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of two isolated vocal facilitating techniques, glottal fry and yawn-sigh, on the phonation of vocally healthy female speech-language pathology (SLP) students. Study design: A multigroup pretest-posttest design was used. Methods: A group of thirty-six healthy female SLP students w...

Objectives: The main objectives of this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study are (1) to investigate brain activity during phonation in women with muscle tension dysphonia (MTD) in comparison with healthy controls; and (2) to explain the neurophysiological mechanism of laryngeal hyperfunction/tension during phonation in patients with...

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to measure the objective and subjective vocal quality in women aged between 60 and 75 years. Secondly, the impact of a teaching or singing career on the vocal quality was investigated by comparing the vocal quality of retired women with different careers. Study design: This is a case-control study. Meth...

Objective: Musical theater performers are a special group of elite vocal performers with a high vocal load as they combine singing, acting, and physical performance. As they are absolutely depending on their voice quality and vocal capacities for their studies and their future profession, an optimal voice production is very important. The purpose...

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate vocal quality, vocal complaints, and risk factors for developing voice disorders in theater actors. Secondly, the impact of one vocal performance on the voice was investigated by comparing objective and subjective vocal quality before and after a theater performance. Study design: Prospect...

Objective: The purpose of this retrospective study was to determine the vocal characteristics of a treatment-seeking population with the primary complaint of vocal fatigue (VF). Methods: Forty-three men (mean age 42 years, range 19-69) and 145 women (mean age 34 years, range 18-68) were included. None of the subjects had received voice therapy o...

Objective: The language development of twins tends to lag behind in comparison to that of singletons. The purpose of this study was to compare expressive and receptive language skills of 3- to 12-year-old twins with singletons. Secondly, correlations between language differences between twins and singletons and age were investigated. Patients and...

The purpose of this study was to determine how use of the vocal facilitating technique, chewing, affected the phonation of speech-language pathology (SLP) students. A pretest-posttest randomized control group design was used. Twenty-seven healthy female SLP students were randomly assigned into either an experimental group or a control group. The ex...

Purpose: The Nasality Severity Index 2.0 (NSI 2.0) forms a new, multiparametric approach in the assessment of hypernasality. To enable clinical implementation of this index, the short- and long-term test-retest reliability of this index was explored. Methods: In 40 normal-speaking adults (mean age 32y, SD 11, 18-56y) and 29 normal-speaking child...

Objectives: This functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study investigated the brain activity associated with pitch adaptation during phonation in healthy women without voice disorders. Study design: This is an interventional prospective study. Methods: Sixteen healthy women (mean age: 24.3 years) participated in a blocked design fMRI ex...

Objectives: The purpose of the current study was to assess the short-term effectiveness of short and intensive speech therapy provided to patients with cleft (lip and) palate (C(L)P) in terms of articulation and resonance. Methods: Five Ugandan patients (age: 7.3-19.6 years) with non-syndromic C(L)P received six hours of individualized speech th...

Objective: The purpose of this retrospective study was to determine the speech characteristics regarding speech intelligibility, voice, articulation, and fluency in future speech-language pathologists (SLPs). Additionally, in 31 SLP students the differences in speech characteristics between the first bachelor and the master year were measured. Pa...

Het doel van dit onderzoek was om het kortetermijneffect van korte, intensieve logopedische therapie op de articulatie en resonantie van patiënten met (cheilognato)palatoschisis ((CG)PS) na te gaan. Vijf Oegandese patiënten (leeftijd 7;4j-19;7j) met een niet-syndromale (CG)PS kregen 6 uur logopedische therapie gespreid over drie of vier dagen. De t...

De doelstelling van de huidige retrospectieve studie (van 1995 tot 2010) is het analyseren van de perceptuele stoornissen van de spraak bij vrouwelijke eerste bachelorstudenten in de opleiding logopedische en audiologische wetenschappen van de Universiteit Gent. Een consensus perceptuele beoordeling werd uitgevoerd van de spraakverstaanbaarheid, de...

De gemiddelde lengte van de uitingen van een kind is een veelgebruikte meting en een goede indicatie voor zijn/ haar vroege taalverwerving. In deze studie werden normen voor het Nederlands opgesteld van de gemiddelde ‘Mean Length of Utterance’ in morfemen (MLU-m) en woorden (MLU-w) tijdens de spontane taal van normaal ontwikkelende eentalige kinder...

Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of the isolated vocal-facilitating techniques Chant Talk and Pitch Inflections on the phonation of healthy female speech-language pathology (SLP) students. Study design: A multigroup pretest-posttest design was used. Methods: A homogenous group of 40 healthy female SLP students w...

The main aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of Vocal Tract Discomfort (VTD) in the Flemish population without self-perceived voice disorders using the VTD scale and to examine the relationship between vocal load and VTD symptoms. In addition, consistency between the VTD scale and the Voice Handicap Index (VHI) and the Corporal Pain scal...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of dialect and gender and to obtain normative nasalance values for Flemish adults as measured with the Nasometer II. One hundred and sixty-four adult subjects from the five regions in Flanders corresponding to different dialects were included in the study. The group consisted of 71 adult men a...

The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of vagal nerve stimulation (VNS) on the vocal quality using the dysphonia severity index (DSI). It was hypothesized that the objective vocal quality and other vocal characteristics are disordered in comparison with an age- and gender-matched control group. In addition, the acoustic vocal paramet...

In prelingually deaf children, many speech production aspects including resonance, are known to be problematic. This study aimed to investigate nasality and nasalance in two groups of prelingually hearing impaired children, namely deaf children with a cochlear implant (CI) and moderate-to-severely hearing impaired hearing aid (HA) users. The result...

The purpose of the present controlled study is to document articulation and oromyofunctional behavior in children seeking orthodontic treatment. In addition, relations between malocclusions, articulation and oromyofunctional behavior are studied. The study included 56 children seeking orthodontic treatment. The control group, consisting of 54 subje...

Aims: The purpose of this study was to describe articulation and resonance characteristics of Ugandan English-speaking children with cleft lip and palate (CLP) after synchronous lip and palatal closure (Sommerlad technique) prior to the age of 6 months in comparison with an age- and gender-matched control group. Methods: Eleven Ugandan patients...

Objective Optimal timing of palatal repair is still subject of discussion. Although literature provides some evidence that palatal closure prior to 6 months positively influence speech outcome in children with clefts, only few studies verified this hypothesis. The purpose of this study was to describe and compare articulation and resonance characte...