The effects of therapeutic group singing on voice, cough and quality of life in parkinson’s disease

Purpose: To examine the effect of a group therapeutic singing intervention on voice, cough, and quality of life in persons with Parkinson Disease (PD) in a community-based outpatient setting using a repeated measures design.Methods: 19 volunteer participants with PD completed the study. Ten participants participated in the intervention and nine served voluntarily as controls. Participants completed one hour group singing sessions over 12 weeks led by a music therapist. Sessions consisted of 30 min of high intensity vocal exercise and 15 to 20 minutes of group singing. Data on phonation, speech, cough, and quality of life were collected pre-intervention and one week post intervention with final data collection 12 weeks post-intervention.Results: No significant change in voice measures although 50% of participants showed improvement. A main effect was found for breathiness (p=0.023), appropriate pitch level (p=0.037) and speaking rate (p=0.009). No main effect for cough but pairwise comparisons were nearly significant pre to post intervention (p=0.053) and pre-intervention to final follow up (p=0.023). No main effect found for QOL but singing participants demonstrated better QOL scores than controls.Conclusions: Results from this small sample suggest that there are some speech benefits from singing intervention as well as potential improvement in cough for airway clearance. Additional study is needed to confirm these results.