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At the 1989 Triological Society meeting in San Francisco, Calif, Drs Richard J. Lipton, Thomas McCaffrey, and Kerry D. Olsen, Rochester, Minn, and Bruce Pearson, Jacksonville, Fla, presented their findings regarding electroglottographic voice analysis of patients following near total laryngectomy. The presentation opened with a brief description of the rationale for near total laryngectomy, and the requirements necessary for successful postoperative voice production. Electroglottography was used to analyze the frequency and power spectrum produced by normal male patients, as well as the group under study. A single patient who had successfully undergone tracheoesophageal puncture, as well as a successful esophageal speaker, were included. These patients were evaluated with the electroglottograph for a 16-second time period of contextual speech. This was an attempt to ascertain how these patients functioned in a social setting.
Normal male subjects were noted to have a rather narrow frequency band centered around 130 Hz. Those patients