What is Voice Aesthetics surgery and when is it applied?
Our voice is our most important tool in our communication and one of the most important factors that play a role in determining our position in society. Voice should be compatible with gender, age and appearance. Otherwise it can create problems in the perception of the individual in society. Voice aesthetics involves the subtlety and density of sound.
Everyone wants to have a beautiful voice, and anyone who doesn't like their voice can approach voice aesthetics.
Who most often needs voice aesthetics?
Patients who have problems in social communication in terms of the perceived thinness and density of their voice.
In this context, cases of puberphonia (mutational falsetto) are the most common group of patients. They do not show the necessary change in the direction of voice thickening during adolescence.
Our childhood voice usually gets rougher with the transition to puberty. But sometimes that thickening doesn't happen and the sound remains thin. This can naturally lead to misunderstanding of the individual in society and social isolation. It is possible to obtain effective and permanent thickening of the voice with certain surgical interventions. These are applied to that group of patients whose sound therapeutic investigations can achieve satisfactory results.
Deep voice problem in women may be caused by structural changes as well as a result of smoking. Very often in women who used hormonal drugs during childhood, the problem of hard voice appears at a later age.
Contrary to these cases, is the thin voice in men, which is provoked by a problem in the vocal cords. Another group of patients resorting to the intervention are those who wish to change their sex. Low voice is also a problem for a group of patients who have structural defects in their vocal cords. Also for those whose voices start to sound thin as a complication as a result of previous vocal cord surgeries.
How is voice aesthetics performed?
Different approaches are used to change the voice to weakness and thickness. Interventions are performed endoscopically through the mouth or through a small incision in the neck. Through these, the frequency of the vocal cords is altered by adjusting the length, mass and tension, just as happens with the strings of an instrument. Through this approach the timbre of the voice can be thinned, thickened and adjusted. The sound therapy applications that are added to the treatment along with the surgical procedure is extremely important and increases the success rate.
Several techniques can be used in voice thinning surgery.
The best known of these is the 4-threeoplasty procedure. In this technique, which is performed under local anaesthesia in order to hear the patient's voice during surgery and to ensure that sufficient thinning of the voice is achieved, the aim is to lengthen the vocal cords and thus thin the voice. This is achieved by bringing two large cartilages in the larynx closer together with a small incision made in the anterior inferior neck. At the same time, it is possible to excise the protruding Adam's apple in the front of the neck, especially in patients wishing to change their sex.Oral surgical interventions for thinning the voice have the advantage of not naturally leaving incision scars on the skin. These techniques are also more easily tolerated by patients as they are performed under general anesthesia.
For this purpose, two techniques that have become more popular and commonly used today are Wendler glottoplasty and laser-assisted thinning (LAVA).
Wendler's glossoplasty aims to increase vocal cord tension and thin the voice by suturing the anterior 1/3 of the vocal cords together. This is a very successful technique and is one of the most preferred surgical procedures for this purpose today.
LAVA, on the other hand, aims to thin the voice by reducing the mass of the vocal cords using a laser. The use of voice therapy during the healing process of all these surgical procedures is extremely beneficial in terms of adjusting the voice and making it permanent.
To thicken the voice, similar techniques are performed, but the approach is to increase the volume and mass of the vocal cords.
