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Background and Aim: Glottic closure pattern is one of the most important stroboscopic signs in judging the normality of laryngeal function. According to the recent researches, complete glottic closure is not the only pattern in normal phonation. The aim of this study was to investigate the glottic closure pattern in normal subjects and to understand the role of sex in having different glottic closure patterns.
Methods: In a cross-sectional study, 80 subjects (58 females and 22 males mean age of 21.19 years) were randomly selected from a population of 218 students. After taking a full medical history and performing perceptual and voice self assessment, subjects without any vocal disorders were recruited. Videolaryngoscopic assessment was performed during producing the vowel sound /i/ in habitual, high, low, loud and soft levels of phonation. Glottic closure patterns were analyzed in different phonation and also were compared between males and females.
Results: Although complete closure was the most frequent pattern, Y posterior chink was the second pattern in males (20.2%) and females (39.4%) in all phonation. The results revealed significant difference between males and females in glottic closure pattern (p=0.001). Moreover, significant differences were observed in habitual (p=0.004), high (p=0.006) and soft (p=0.02) phonations between males and females however, the differences in low (p=0.7) and loud (p=0.19) phonations between males and females were not significant.
Conclusion: Y posterior chink, as well as complete closure, are likely to be normal findings in people with normal voice. Besides, gender has a significant influence on glottic closure pattern.

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Background and Aim: An imbalance between phonatory subsystems may lead to disturbing phonatory muscular balance and consequently voice disorders. Based on theoretical issues, criterion-based laryngeal manual therapy, as a novel treatment method which is supported by classical laryngeal manual therapy, can improve voice quality using manual maneuvers combined with phonatory tasks. The present study aimed to report the treating effects of this method on hyperfunctional voice disorders.

Methods: Twenty adult participants with hyperfunctional voice disorders by the least three months history of voice disorder were selected. The participant’s voices were assessed multidimensionally using acoustic, audio-pecreptual and stroboscopic assessments before and after treatment.

Results: There were a decrease in jitter (p=0.003) and shimmer (p<0.001) and also, increase in harmonic-to-noise ratio (HNR) (p<0.001) of vowel /a/ after treatment. Besides, there was an increase in harmony to noise ratio (p=0.009) and decrease in jitter (p=0.020) of vowel /i/, too. There were not significant changes in shimmer amount of vowel /i/ (p=0.170) after treatment. There were highly significant changes in all aspects of audio-perceptual (p<0.001) and videostroboscopic (p<0.001) parameters.

Conclusion: Using voice-based laryngeal manual therapy can be a treatment method in handling hyperfunctional voice disorders.