الفهرس 
AcknowledgementOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Voice disorders have major implications for patients’ social-emotional and physical wellbeing. For individuals whose occupation relies on voice performance (i.e. teachers, lawyers, singers, etc.), a voice disorder could lead to emotional, professional and financial difficulties. In addition, a voice loss could result in an individual missing days of work or changing their career path completely.The evaluation of singing voice involves assessment of the anatomic, physiologic, and behavioral factors that influence overall vocal production. Assessment begins with a description of the voice, symptomatology, and a medical and social history. Laryngeal visualization is necessary to determine the status of the vocal folds. Self-assessment protocols help to determine the impact of a voice problem in the life of an individual. The most popular self-assessment protocol for this matter is the voice handicap index (VHI). However, this instrument is not sensitive to the evaluation of singers. In order to suppress this need, however, until present, there is no Arabic version of (SVHI) addressing the severity of the voice problem in Arabic singers.The classical singing handicap index (CSHI) is self - administered questionnaire that consists of 30 items, divided into three subscales: Disability, Handicap and Impairment. The responses of the severity of each subscale were summed to obtain the total score for each individual with a maximum total of 120 points, being that the higher the score, the greater the severity of voice handicap .The Arabic version of CSHI was pilot-tested with ten Egyptian singers (5 Quran reciters, 3 classical singers and 2 popular singers). The Arabic-CSHI was then amended according to their responses to make the phrases more clear .The research design was applied on 70 Egyptian singers; forty asymptomatic singers (control group) and thirty dysphonic singers (patient group). The control group consisted of 16 Quran reciters, 10 priests, 7 classical singers, and 7 popular singers. They included 31 males and 9 females. The patient group consisted of 17 Quran reciters, 2 priests, 8 classical singers, and 3 popular singers. They included 26 control subjects and 18 patients reported previous professional training.The patients group were subjected to auditory perceptual assessment of their voices (APA) and endoscopic evaluations of their larynges. The control and patient groups were asked to respond to the final form of the Arabic CSHI. Reliability of the test was proven by test- retest method , and internal consistency using reliability coefficient. Validity was proven through content validity, internal consistency validity and known group comparison.The results of this study demonstrated that Quran reciters were the most suffered group compared to other types of jobs. Another finding in this study, patients diagnosed with MAPLs showed the highest scores compared to other types of disease of the patient groups. Moreover, the results of this study demonstrated that there was negative relation between scores of Arabic CSHI and receiving ‘professional training’. Also there was correlation between grade of dysphonia and scores of Arabic CSHI.Based on the results of this study, we can conclude that the ‘Arabic Classical Singing Handicap Index (A-CSHI) ‘is a reliable and valid questionnaire, which evaluates the impact of voice disorders and can be used in the clinical practice for evaluation of the professional voice users such as (classical singers, priest, Quran recites and popular singers). The result were highly significant and questionnaire were capable to discriminating between normal and complaining one.