Nodules and How They Affect Your Voice

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Hoarseness, breathiness, scratchy/rough voice, the "lump in your throat" sensation, shooting pains from ear to ear, the need to breathe in deeper than usual ... these are all symptoms that a nodule can cause. A nodule is basically a small growth and looks like a bump on your vocal folds. This growth occurs from vocal abuse, misuse, and overuse. A healthy, normal vocal chord often has smooth, white mucosal surfaces and has no irregular objects on your vibrating borders. But when you abuse your vocal chords by putting force and tension upon them, the vibrations go into an "overload" and can cause too much friction on them. Eventually a type of bruise forms called a hematoma and a layer of fibrous tissues form into a soft or hard bump, AKA a nodule. Usually two nodules would form on each side of a vocal fold where the friction was extensive.

Many may wonder if nodules are cancerous, the answer is that they're not. They are just simply growths that affect the voice. Treating these nodules is simply stated. A specialist will first tell a person with a nodule to completely rest their voice. Rest is just the first step and will not get rid of them by that alone. If you are a speaker then speech therapy is recommended and if you're a singer than receive singing exercises from professional help. Surgery is that last result and is very uncommon. It is rarely necessary and is only for nodules that are extremely large or if six weeks of training and help left with no result at all. It is mainly an issue for children who are of the age of 10 or under. There are known to be some logical reasons why surgery is rarely recommended for them. Usually if a child has a nodule removed, it will most likely re-occur or come back and there would have been no point of removing it in the first place. Another thing is that children abuse their voice much more often than adults. This is just because they scream and carry on more often than adults ever would which results in possibilities of seeing the nodules resolve around the time the children hit puberty. For girls who are in their teens and becoming something like a cheerleader who constantly has to yell, future problems can occur. Schools rarely recommend speech therapy because most often it doesn't help.

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