Voiceproblem.org: The Voice Problem Website

Welcome to Voiceproblem.org, The Voice Problem Website. Voiceproblem.org is brought to you by The Watergate Voice Foundation, a non-profit educational foundation funded through private sources. The Consortium's entire purpose is to support patients with voice disorders as they seek healing for the more complex, more intractable voice problems.

The Voice Problem Website asked six of the nation's best-recognized voice surgeons to structure, write and edit the medical information in these pages. Committed to voice disorders, these world-recognized voice specialists completed some thousand hours of effort on their own time. The result is on the screen before you.

In this site, visitors will find information, encouragement and next steps on how to deal with their voice conditions. This information is broken down into the ten sections below.

Introduction

In our first section, you will find more information on The Voice Problem Website, a personal letter from our founder, a "top 10" lessons list for the patient and 62 possible lessons on recovering your voice.

Anatomy and Physiology of Voice Production

Anatomy In our second section, you will find key information and diagrams on how normal voice is produced. Knowing the roles the voice box and its parts play in speaking and singing will help you better understand how voice disorders cause voice problems.

Chapters in this section include "Understanding How Voice is Produced", "Learning About the Voice Mechanism", and "How Breakdowns Result in Voice Disorders".

Voice Disorders

In our third section, you will find information on a number of voice disorders, including:

laryngitis
laryngeal atypia and early cancer
laryngeal advanced cancer
reflux laryngitis
Reinke's edema
RRP-papillomatosis
spasmodic dysphonia
vocal fold granuloma
vocal fold paresis/paralysis
vocal fold scarring

vocal fold lesions
voice dysfunction in neurological disorders:
- stroke
- Parkinson's disease
- benign essential tremor (BET)
- amyothrophic lateral sclerosis
- myasthenia gravis (MG)
- multiple sclerosis (MS)
pediatric voice disorders

Voice Care Team

In our fourth section, you will find more information on interdisciplinary teams of voice professionals, including otolaryngologists/laryngologists, speech language pathologists, singing and acting voice specialists, and multidisciplinary professionals. This section also includes information on new developments in voice care.

Personal Experiences

Experiences One of the most critical things to remember is that you are not alone. In our fifth section you will find testimonials from other voice patients, posted here in QuickTime video format.

Symptom Tree

Our sixth section, the Voice Disorders Symptom Tree for Patients, is an organizational tool for classifying representative voice symptoms so that patients can realize that seeking voice care is important – not just on the "to-do" list but on the "must-do" list. By answering a short series of questions, the Symptom Tree for Patients provides some idea of how other patients with similar symptoms have been diagnosed.

Glossary

Like any scientific area, the field of otolaryngology and laryngology is filled with terms and phrases that may seem daunting. In our Glossary section, we have assembled a list of common definitions that may help, as well as a collection of the graphics and images used throughout this site.

Resources

While this site is intended to inform and educate our visitors as much as possible, it is critical for people suffering voice disorders to seek out professional help. In our ninth section we have provided information on how to find a voice physician, as well as a list of links to other related sites on the Internet.

As policy, we cannot respond to emails, but we appreciate any feedback that you may have, or any personal stories that you might like to add to our "Personal Experiences" section. In our final section you will find our contact information.