Table 6.

Aspects of the three speech rehabilitation methods with regards to required equipment, costs and dependence on healthcare system [1, 50, 53, 59–62]

	Esophageal speech (ES)	Tracheoesophageal speech (TES)	Electrolarynx speech (ELS)
Mechanical or prosthetic device required	No	Yes	Yes
Hand occupied during voicing	No	Yes/no, some patients are able to use an automatic speaking valve	Yes
Dependence on speech language pathologist (SLP)	Yes, nowadays fewer SLP’s have knowledge of providing ES therapy	Yes, knowledge of voice prosthesis equipment and TES rehabilitation is required	Yes
Duration of the therapeutic process to functional speech	Training time, mostly concerns several months	Useful speech is mostly achieved within five training sessions	Useful speech is mostly achieved within five training sessions
Financial implications	No material costs. More therapeutic costs during often prolonged training period	Material costs, higher than ES and ELS. Potential reimbursement issues. Lower therapeutic costs that ES, comparable to ELS	Material costs, lower than TES. Lower therapeutic costs that ES, comparable to TES
Overall success achieving useable speech	Low success rate	High success rate	High success rate