OBJECTIVETo investigate the relationship between laryngeal morphologic changes and voice changes in old people.

METHODSFifty four healthy people older than 60 years were studied. Laryngeal morphologic changes and vocal acoustics features were observed and analyzed. Forty six college students aged between 21-22 years were included as the young control group, and 23 of them are males and 23 females.

RESULTSSixteen cases with vocal fold atrophy (55.2%), 18 cases with glottis incompetence (62.1%), 16 cases with hypoglottic mucosal edema (55.2%), 12 cases with surpassing ventricular fold (refers to the phenomenon that the ventricular fold covers part or all of the vocal cord during phonation) (41.4%) were observed in the old male; 15 cases with edema of interarytenoid fold (60.0%), 14 cases with glottis incompetence (56.0%), 12 cases with vocal fold atrophy (48.0%), 8 cases with vocal fold edema (32.0%) were observed in the old female. Fundamental frequency (F 0) ascended in the male while declined in the female; jitter, shimmer and noise to harmonic ratio enlarged, and vocal tremor intensity index increased too. Soft phonation was noticed especially in the voices of the old male. Compared with the control group, there was statistic significance (each p value is less than 0.05 or 0.01) except for the increasing of jitter, shimmer and soft phonation index in the old female.

CONCLUSIONSSignificant changes were found in the old when the morphology of larynx and features of vocal acoustics were studied, hypoglottic edema and interarytenoid edema are common in the old.