This is a prospective cohort study. A total of 20 consecutive subjects diagnosed with chronic tympanic membrane perforation and presenting to Dr. George Zaytoun and Dr. Marc Bassim’s clinic at the American University of Beirut – Medical Center will be invited to participate in this study. While the sample size might seem small, this study is the first of its kind and is intended to be a pilot study. 

A total of 30 consecutive subjects diagnosed to have chronic eardrum perforation will be invited to participate in this study.

Patients will be informed about the study by Dr. Zaytoun and Dr. Bassim and if they agree to participate, they will be offered to undergo an acoustic voice analysis through OperaVox® application for mobile operating systems. OperaVox is a validated application designed to measure the quality of voice (Hughes et al., 2012).

The tested parameters are: Habitual pitch, fundamental frequency, Voice Turbulence Index, Noise-to-Harmonic Ratio, shimmer, jitter and formant frequencies. They will then be offered another acoustic analysis simultaneously with their follow-up postoperative audiogram after 1 month using the same method.