Basic HTML Version
effectiveness of Stretch-and-Flow Voice Therapy in a randomized
controlled crossover trial of patients with voice disorders.
“Stretch-and-Flow Voice Therapy is not a new voice therapy, but there
is very little science that backs up its effectiveness even though many
speech-language pathologists are using this,” he says. “So one of our
goals is to apply scientific methodology to Stretch-and-Flow Voice
Therapy in clinical research to determine if indeed we can establish a
valid treatment effect.
“Certainly the initial data we are getting from patients enrolled in this
study is showing that yes, it does,” he adds.
Watts is about a third of the way through the study, which he hopes
will have 30 participants. Patients diagnosed at TCU’s Miller Speech
& Hearing Clinic or UTSW who fit the study’s criteria are invited to
participate, and they have equal chance of being assigned to the
treatment group or the control group.
Patients in the treatment group receive six weeks of Stretch-and-Flow
therapy. Patients assigned to the control group receive no therapy for
six weeks but then cross over to an alternative treatment group and
receive Resonant Voice Therapy. A TCU grant helps pay for the therapy
patients receive, so there is no cost to participants.
“We have created two studies in one,” Watts said. “We’re able to
compare Stretch-and-Flow Voice Therapy to a no-treatment control,
which is the gold standard for clinical treatment research. We’re also
able to compare it to this alternative voice therapy — Resonant Voice
Therapy — and there is empirical data supporting the effectiveness of
RVT. So we can compare this against an already validated treatment.”
Second-year graduate students Mackenzie Meredith, Stephanie Lewis
and Jillian Stanfield, along with first-year graduate student Tracy
Littlefield, have helped Watts with measurement of the outcome
variables in the Laryngeal Function Laboratory in the Miller Speech &
Hearing Clinic.
Watts hopes data from this study will help support a larger federal
grant application. “That’s how we hope to repay TCU for its investment,”
he says.
CHIN-TO-CHEST
Watts also is developing a new exercise for people who have swallowing
difficulties because the muscles that lift their larynx are not working
well. If the larynx doesn’t elevate when a person swallows, food can get
into the airway and cause aspiration —which in the elderly often leads
to pneumonia.
Noting that strength training promotes muscles to grow stronger by
using resistance, Watts began thinking how to apply resistance to
the muscles that lift the larynx. Using non-impaired participants, he
investigated whether opening their mouths while pressing their chin
against resistance activated these muscles with a significant difference
than just sitting with their mouths closed.
In Watts’ new Chin-to-Chest exercise, individuals press their lower
jaw into a custom fitted neck brace with chin support, which adds
resistance to the muscular contraction. Watts compared results from
Chin-to-Chest with a rest condition and with current clinical exercises
used in patients with swallowing impairments.
“Because it was using resistance, Chin-to-Chest was activating the
muscles to a much higher degree than both rest and other validated
exercises which target these muscles,” he says.
Watts’ initial research has been accepted for publication in
Archives of
Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
. Already applying this exercise to
clinical populations, he is seeking to recruit individuals who require
tube feeding for nutritional needs due to impaired laryngeal elevation.
He hopes to determine if the Chin-to-Chest exercise can rehabilitate
the laryngeal elevator muscles to a degree that will allow these patients
to once again eat food orally.
NEW KNOWLEDGE
In addition to his own primary research,Watts ismentoring five students
working on honors theses, and he includes his four graduate assistants
in his research as much as possible.
“I’m just interested in so many things,” he says. “Thank God I have
students who are also interested in research that I can mentor. They
help me with these projects, and without them I would not be able to
investigate all the things I am interested in. That’s one of the things that
makes TCU so great — students want to get involved.”
Watts says the purpose of a university is twofold: disseminate
knowledge and create new knowledge through research.
“I get to teach students what I know and what they need to know for
their major or their discipline, but I also get to create new knowledge
with the students. And that’s rewarding.”
“I WANT TO IMPROVE YOUR LIFE
. I WANT TO HELP YOU
COMMUNICATE AND SWALLOW BETTER.
TO DO THAT ETHICALLY,
I HAVE TO APPLY THE PRINCIPLES OF EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICE.”
FEATURES
Harris College Magazine
- 2014 ·
15