Muscle Tension Dysphonia (MTD)

Muscle tension dysphonia (MTD) is a voice disorder that is characterized by excessive and dysregulated muscle activity in the larynx and surrounding regions. Muscle tension dysphonia is classified as a functional voice disorder, which assumes a physiological misuse of the phonatory, respiratory, or articulatory systems during voice production. Functional voice disorders are differentiated from those voice disorders with structural or neurologic laryngeal pathology. MTD was first described by Murray Morrison and colleagues as a syndrome of musculoskeletal voice disorders that included primary and secondary subtypes. The term primary muscle tension dysphonia is used to describe the disorder variant that occurs in the absence of other organic or neurologic laryngeal abnormalities, in contrast to secondary muscle tension dysphonia, in which the dysphonia is considered to be ...