Electrolarynx

Electrolaryngeal speech
И
Encoding
Entity (decimal)И
Unicode (hex)U+0418

An electrolarynx, sometimes referred to as a "throat back", is a medical device about the size of a small electric razor used to produce clearer speech by those people who have lost their voice box, usually due to cancer of the larynx. The most common device is a handheld, battery-operated device pressed against the skin under the mandible which produces vibrations to allow speech;[1] other variations include a device similar to the "talk box" electronic music device, which delivers the basis of the speech sound via a tube placed in the mouth.[2] Earlier non-electric devices were called mechanical larynxes. Along with developing esophageal voice, using a speech synthesizer, or undergoing a surgical procedure, the electrolarynx serves as a mode of speech recovery for laryngectomy patients.[2][3]

The Voice Quality Symbol for electrolaryngeal phonation in speech is И, approximating the symbol for electricity.

  1. ^ Department of Otolaryngology. "Electrolaryngeal Speech". Eastern Virginia Medical School. Archived from the original on 2012-08-24. Retrieved 2013-03-14.
  2. ^ a b Only Human; Cineflix (2018-06-20). Speaking with a Dead Man's Voice by Organ Transplant Surgery | Only Human. YouTube. Retrieved 2019-08-06.
  3. ^ Krishnan, Giri; Du, Charles; Fishman, Jonathan M.; Foreman, Andrew; Lott, David G.; Farwell, Gregory; Belafsky, Peter; Krishnan, Suren; Birchall, Martin A. (August 2017). "The current status of human laryngeal transplantation in 2017: A state of the field review". The Laryngoscope. 127 (8): 1861–1868. doi:10.1002/lary.26503. ISSN 1531-4995. PMID 28224630. S2CID 24360597.