Music therapy in voice and speech disorders in patients with Parkinson's disease

Voice and speech disorders are common accompanying symptoms of Parkinson???s disease. They limit the opportunities of patients to participate in many activities in their personal and social lives. However, they receive little attention in the intervention off er. One of the promising non--pharmacologicaltherapeutic approaches in this area is music therapy. The presented review paper provides information on the course, results and limits of implemented music therapy interventions focused on the treatment of voice and speech disorders in patients with Parkinson???s disease. Based on a search of the available literature in the English-language internet databases, nine studies describing music therapy intervention aimed at achieving changes in voice and speech in patients with Parkinson???s disease were included in this review. Results showed improvement in the following areas: increase in voice strength, maximum phonation time, speech intelligibility, speech fl uency, speech prosody, and respiratory functions. Although statistically significant changes in these areas were not observed in all included protocols, the evaluation of the results of individual studies showed that patients did not worsen in the monitored areas, despite the progressive nature of the disease. These findings suggest that music therapy intervention is a promising and beneficial non-pharmacological approach in comprehensive therapy of Parkinson???s disease.