Bilateral vocal fold lesions can result in negative emotional reactions, physical or functional problems, or adverse self-perception. Many factors, such as age, gender, occupation, or personality, affect the perceived voice quality of an individual with bilateral vocal fold lesions. Anatomical or functional changes occurring during puberty may correlate with a shift in prevalence amongst individuals with bilateral vocal fold lesions and perceived poor vocal quality. Age and gender play an especially important role in prevalence and perceived severity of vocal quality (Kilic, Okur, Yildirim, Guzelsoy, 2003). In this study, physical, functional, and emotional complaints were compared pre- and post-puberty in participants with bilateral vocal fold lesions. Descriptive statistics were used to find the mean percent change of pre-puberty and post-puberty Pediatric Voice Handicap Index (pVHI) subtest scores related to perceptual voice quality in children with bilateral vocal fold lesions. An improvement in perceived vocal quality (67.41% decrease in functional scores, 63.09% decrease in emotional scores, 58.06% decrease in physical scores) was noted in post-puberty surveys. The comparison between pre- and post-puberty data showed that males experienced a marked improvement in perceptual vocal quality, while females experienced improvement to a lesser extent.
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