| Abstract | Objective:
Throughout pregnancy many physical, neurological, and emotional changes happen to support the growing fetus and mother (Cunningham et al, 2022) . Often the body systems that are impacted during pregnancy do not return to the pre-pregnancy state completely. The voice is one of the major systems affected, but little research is there to help guide a woman through this great change. Even less is documented about the effects of disease during pregnancy on the voice. We know that major hormones like estrogen and progesterone play a huge part in these changes (Abitbol, 2006), but what about the diseases that coincide with pregnancy? These diseases range from mild to severe and even life threatening for the mother and fetus. Voice specialists must know how these diseases affect the mother, fetus, and the voice to provide the best support to professional voice users. This integrative review will provide analysis on the available data and shortcomings in research to support vocal health. This paper will leverage all available relevant articles to provide a holistic examination of vocal health and how they coincide with diseases of pregnancy.
Methods/Design:
This is an integrative review and therefore it assembles the literature around pregnancy, the voice, and the diseases of pregnancy. These articles were meticulously selected through an advanced search of search engines such as PubMed, Web of science, and more. In order to filter the most relevant information these research articles were placed through an extraction tool on Covidence.
Results:
Results from this assembly of research literature give guidance on the gaps that remain on the voice, pregnancy, and the diseases of pregnancy. It also gives guidance on how to provide better and more effective voice recommendations for those who are pregnant or have a disease of pregnancy.
Conclusions:
In order to better serve our professional voice users, we must understand major life changes like pregnancy and how they affect the voice. Understanding the diseases of pregnancy and how they will affect the voice is a start to understanding how to work with our singers through these life changes. This integrative review shows the gaps that are still present in the research in regard to how diseases of pregnancy will affect the voice. However, it gives more guidance on how to work with singers as they progress through pregnancy and the diseases of pregnancy.
|
|---|