Speech therapy program to improve of the speech and swallowing

Programa de atención logopédica integral para favorecer el habla y la deglución

Abstract

People with cervical spinal cord injury have a problem in speech and swallowing.  To evaluate a speech therapy care program to improve speech and swallowing in people with cervical spinal cord injury. Two experimental studies were carried aut with 108 people with cervical spinal cord injury. The first study evaluated the individual modality with the use the speech therapy exercises and electrotherapy in abdominal muscles. The second study evaluated the group modality with the use of choral singing in speech therapy rehabilitation. Patients were  assessed before and after application of the treatment with the following variables: forced vital capacity, peak expiratory flow, maximum phonation time, reading the words, vocal intensity, rate of speech disabilities and preparation of the family and the interdisciplinary team.: Two modalities the intervention improvement in the studied variables (p≤0.05). However, the use of electrostimulation significantly increased the recovery of vocal intensity (p= 0.0485) and forced expiratory flow (p=0.0000) and also showed a positive correlation [F(1, 28)=7.5478;p< 0.01]. Choral singing was able to induce significant changes in forced expiratory flow and maximum phonation times with /a/.The application of the speech therapy program to improve of the respiratory function, speech, voice and swallowing in people with cervical spinal cord injury.