| Abstrakt: |
Introduction: Voice is the main form of expressing feelings, opinions and identity. Especially for transgender people, an incongruence between how they sound and who they are is meaningfully stressful and has severe impacts on self-image, mental health and quality of life, resulting on gender dysphoria. Transgender women are even more affected by this condition, since hormone therapy fails to feminize their voice. For 20% of patients seeking voice feminization, voice therapy is not completely satisfactory, and surgery is considered. Multiple techniques have been described, with Wendler glottoplasty being the current practice. Objectives: The aim of this work is to discuss the current technique used for pitch elevation for transgender woman and the importance of phonosurgery for such patients. Data synthesis: Wendler glottoplasty, based on decreasing the vibratory length of the vocal fold, was the most described technique in the literature. The strengths of this procedure are the endoscopic technique and long-lasting results. It is considered efficient and has a low potential for complications. Pre- and postoperative voice therapy is recommended. There is an estimated mean increase of 78 Hz on fundamental frequency (the main parameter to evaluate feminization of voice), that can improve even more when associated with voice therapy. There is a low worsening of other acoustic parameters or voice quality. Patients' subjective success rate bordered 78.5%. Conclusion: Pitch elevation surgery largely contributes to voice feminization and potentially reduces gender dysphoria in transgender people. Wendler glotoplasy has proven to be the best for such purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
