Esofatic

In general, laryngotomized group suffer psychological consequences after being excised the larynx because they lose one of the primary way of comunication: the speech. Indeed, without the vocal cords they lose the ability to speak as we know and it can only return after a long learning period in which the patients learn to talk through the esophagus. The esophageal voice has the peculiarity of having a low intelligibility and be deeper. Therefore, it can often be embarrasing to practice esophageal voice in public, which it can derive in situations in which the patient decides not to speak because of the shame and the lack of motivation the learning of the esophageal voice can cause.This project, ESOFATIC, aims to provide the laryngolomized associations with the help of otolaryngologists, speech pathologist and speech therapists, terminals like PCs with a touch screen or tablets and smarphones for individual use, to measure the progress made throughout the learning process of the esophageal voice. The target population is about 90,000 adults with a small number of women.The objectives of the project are:To create a database of healthy, pathological and oesophageal voicesTo select accepted voice quality parameters by the scientific communityTo develop advanced processing algorithms for accurate measurement of acoustic voice parametersTo improve the learning process of esophageal speechTo involve the group of laryngectomized with new technologies.Collaborating companies