World Voice Day 2011: Don't Neglect Your Voice

The goal of World Voice Day is to increase public awareness of the human voice and the need for vocal preventive care and treatment.
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Most people can't imagine living without hearing or sight, but we don't often think about what it would be like to live without our voice. Movie goers who have seen "The King's Speech" know what can happen to our voices when we are hampered by fear or low self-esteem. But the ability to create the magic of sound and communication can also be impaired -- or even totally lost -- by smoking, drinking, chronic cough, hoarseness, aging, and illnesses such as head and neck cancer and disorders of the vocal folds. To address these conditions, which are more prevalent than most people think, we established The Voice and Swallowing Institute at The New York Eye and Ear Infirmary in Manhattan in 2005.

At The Voice and Swallowing Institute we care for elite performing singers, actors, and other professional voice users, as well as any person with hoarseness, throat pain or irritation, vocal fatigue, difficulty breathing or difficulty swallowing. In today's world the demands on our voices are extreme, whether at our jobs, chatting socially in a restaurant, talking on our cell phones, cheering our favorite sports teams, debating politics, or reading a child a bedtime story. The voice is there until it's not there when we need it!

Since the Institute's founding, it has become a leading medical resource. One of our patients, a radio personality, told us we saved his career; a patient who is a sales executive told us the compassion we showed for her and her family and the tips we provided for caring for her voice restored her confidence.

Four years ago we teamed with MusiCares, the charitable arm of The Recording Academy, to announce a free, one-day voice screening in conjunction with World Voice Day, and we were deluged with requests for appointments by more than 200 professional singers eagerly seeking services. Every year since then we've hosted a day of free screenings, which we plan to do again this April 16.

The roots of World Voice Day go back to 1999, when members of the 'Sociedade Brasileira de Laringologia e Voz - SBLV' -- physicians, speech-language pathologists, singing teachers and artists -- joined together to simultaneously raise awareness about the fragile nature of the voice while celebrating its beauty. They called it Brazilian National Voice Day, observed on April 16th. This event quickly resonated with others in Argentina and Portugal, and the movement grew to become International Voice Day. In 2002, the American Academy of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery officially recognized the celebration, and World Voice Day was born.

The goal of World Voice Day is to increase public awareness of the human voice and the need for vocal preventive care and treatment. Take the below survey: if your answer to any of the seven questions below is "yes" you're probably not enjoying optimal vocal health, and should consider seeking medical assistance from a specialist in the field of voice and swallowing:

- Have you been hoarse for more than two weeks?
- Do you have to strain to be heard?
- Does your voice get tired?
- Does your voice give you difficulty at the end of your work day?
- Do you have difficulty swallowing?
- Does food get stuck or go down the wrong way?
- Have you been told you have acid reflux from your stomach into your throat?

For information on voice and swallowing health, visit www.nyee.edu

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