Patient-Centered Approach to Assessing Voice Impairment

Which items on the Voice Handicap Index-10 (VHI-10) questionnaire do patients with voice impairment perceive as important and what subset of items would they choose for a shorter assessment?This psychometric study analyzed data from 6048 patients with voice impairment who completed the VHI-10 questionnaire and identified a 6-item subset for a shorter assessment. Patients chose items 1 (difficult for people to hear me), 2 (difficult to be understood in a noisy room), 3 (my voice restricts my personal/social life), 6 (have to strain to produce voice), and 7 (voice clarity is unpredictable), plus item 5, (causes me to lose income), which was identified by both clinicians and patients as imperative to all sets.These findings suggest that a patient-centered subset of the VHI-10 is capable of providing new brevity and preserved nuance when collecting information from patients with voice impairment.

Corresponding Author: Jennifer J. Shin, MD, SM, Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery, Mass General Brigham, 45 Francis St, Boston, MA 02115 (jennifer_shin@meei.harvard.edu).

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