Expert System-Type Approach to Voice Disorders: Scheduling Botulinum Toxin Treatment for Adductor Spasmodic Dysphonia

One of the most debilitating disorders is adductor spasmodic dysphonia (ADSD), a voice disorder caused by involuntary movements of the muscles of the larynx (voice box). For treating ADSD, botulinum toxin (BT) injections turned out to be very useful. However, the effects of BT are highly variable, so at present, there is no objective criterion of when such a BT treatment is necessary. It is therefore desirable to develop such a criterion. In this paper, we show that traditional statistical techniques are unable to generate such a criterion, while a natural expert system approach seems to be capable of generating reasonably simple rules that determine when a BT treatment is necessary.