Abstract:Objective To explore the effect of endotracheal intubation on the voice of patients undergoing ear surgery. Methods Fifty-two adult patients who underwent ear surgery under general anaesthesia with endotracheal intubation in our department from Jan 2017 to Oct 2017 were included. Voice acoustic analysis was performed one day before intubation, 1 and 3 days after intubation in all the patients. The changes in acoustic parameters including fundamental frequency (F0), fundamental frequency perturbation (Jitter), absolute tone perturbation (Jita), amplitude perturbation (Shimmer), perturbation quotient (APQ) and noise-harmonic ratio (NHR) were measured and compared. Results Compared with the Jitter and Jita of one day before intubation, those on the first day after intubation showed increasing trends, with significant differences (both P<0.05). However, their values returned to the preoperative level on the third day after intubation. The change of F0 before and after intubation was insignificant. The other parameters on the first day after intubation were higher than those before intubation with statistically insignificant differences (all P>0.05), and returned to the preoperative level on the third day after intubation. Conclusion Endotracheal intubation may cause transient changes in some acoustic parameters without normal tone changes and hoarseness, and therefore has no significant effect on voice of patients undergoing ear surgery.