Speech therapy for children with dysarthia acquired before three years of age

Children with motor impairments often have the motor speech disorder dysarthria, a condition which effects the tone, strength and co-ordination of any or all of the muscles used for speech. Resulting speech difficulties can range from mild, with slightly slurred articulation and breathy voice, to profound, with an inability to produce any recognisable words. Children with dysarthria are often prescribed communication aids to supplement their natural forms of communication. However, there is variation in practice regarding the provision of therapy focusing on voice and speech production. Descriptive studies have suggested that therapy may improve speech, but its effectiveness has not been evaluated. To assess whether any speech and language therapy intervention aimed at improving the speech of children with dysarthria is more effective in increasing children ' s speech intelligibility or communicative participation than no intervention at all , and to compare the efficacy of individual types of speech language therapy in improving the speech intelligibility or communicative participation of children with dysarthria.
Source: Current Awareness Service for Health (CASH) - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news