The effect of septoplasty and turbinate surgery on voice

Objective: To investigate the effect of septoplasty and bilateral inferior turbinate surgery on voice in patients with nasal septal deviation and bilateral inferior turbinate hypertrophy. Materials and Methods: Forty patients with nasal septal deviation and bilateral inferior turbinate hypertrophy, who underwent septoplasty and bilateral inferior turbinoplasty were included in the study. All the participants filled in the VHI-10, VAS and NOSE scales at submission and postoperative 2nd month. Voice recordings of sustained vowel /a/ and /mini/ word were obtained and analysed by MDVP sound analysis program. Acoustic analysis was performed with sustained vowel /a/, spectrographic analysis with sustained consonants /m/, /n/ and vowel /i/ in word /mini/. Results: A statistically significant decrease was revealed between pre- and post-operative (2nd month) VAS and NOSE scores (p<0,05). There was no significant difference between the preoperative and postoperative (2nd month) VHI-10 scores (p>0,05). Concerning the acoustic analysis, a significant difference was found between preoperative and postoperative F0 values (p<0,05). However, there was no statistically significant difference between preoperative and postoperative values of jitter, jitter%, shimmer, shimmer% and NHR (p>0,05). No significant difference was found between preoperative and postoperative (2nd month) values of F1, F2, F3 and F4 formants concerning spectrographic analysis (p>0,05). Conclusion: We failed to reveal any significant impact of septoplasty and bilateral inferior turbinate surgery on voice concerning subjective evaluation, acoustic analysis and spectrographic evaluation.