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Results 1 - 10 of 27
Credit(s): PDHs: 1.0, ASHA CEUs*: 0.1
Summary: Ototoxic medications and chemical agents in the workplace can put individuals' hearing and vestibular health at risk for permanent injury. Proactive ototoxicity management (OtoM) strategies aim to minimize exposure, avoid onset of symptoms, provide ongoing monitoring, and manage auditory and vestibular changes as the clinical needs of the patient evolve. During a 2021 American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Special Interest Groups Open House, members of the International Ototoxicity Management Group discussed how best to integrate OtoM into routine clinical practice, what tools to use, and what special considerations need to be understood to best support patients and their families. Here, we have summarized their viewpoints to encourage widespread adoption of improved OtoM services for at-risk individuals. The field of audiology needs to move to a place where we better understand the full extent of ototoxicity and can agree on expanding minimum guidelines that can be implemented more universally to mitigate, detect, and manage the damage from ototoxic exposures. Only recently has our field seen a therapeutic drug that can protect against ototoxicity; however, the population served is restricted only to children receiving treatment for nonmetastatic carcinoma. This is hopefully just the beginning of future therapeutic interventions to come, but, in the meantime, ototoxicity resulting from other medications in different patient populations and chemical agents persists.
Credit(s): PDHs: 1.0, ASHA CEUs*: 0.1
Summary: As a step toward developing an electrophysiologic method for validating the speech feature discrimination benefits of amplification, the article in this SIG 6 activity evaluates the effect of stimulus level and amplification on the acoustic change complex in adults with sensorineural hearing loss.
Credit(s): PDHs: 3.5, ASHA CEUs*: 0.35
Summary: In this SIG 4 activity, learners will read three peer-reviewed articles centered on cluttering in preadolescent through adult speakers. The first article is a case study of a preadolescent with cluttering. In this paper, the authors highlight brain development during adolescence, adolescent cognitive and emotional development, and the effects of a therapy approach based on objective speech measures. The second article is a research study concerned with disfluency clusters produced by adults with cluttering in natural conversations. The authors describe how disfluency clusters are affected by the nature of the relationship between speakers. The last article presents qualitative data from a focus group of adults with cluttering who have emerged as community leaders. Their reflections include recommendations for listeners and support groups, self management, and their thoughts on labels and acronyms.
Credit(s): PDHs: 1.5, ASHA CEUs*: 0.15
Summary: In the rising digital era, and especially since the pandemic, implementation of telehealth and provision of auditory rehabilitation (AR) using digital platforms have notably increased. This has changed the outlook of service provision by audiologists and speech-language pathologists alike. Digital platforms have the potential to positively impact AR practices by improving accessibility of rehabilitation services as well as by facilitating a more effective way to share resources with both professionals and end users. This SIG 7 activity includes two articles about the accessibility and effectiveness of digital platforms to provide AR services for both adults and children with hearing difficulties. The first article discusses the differences in the distribution strategy, users’ experience, and satisfaction for two digital platforms (a static website and an active blog) offering AR materials for professionals. Their study concludes that social media–focused active distribution is effective because it results in more total traffic, a greater number of users, more frequent access, and an overall high level of satisfaction with the quality of information and resources. The second article discusses the details of a Zoom-based telepractice initial evaluation protocol used by speech-language pathologists serving children who are hard of hearing and their families. This clinical protocol was designed to synchronously share resources and questionnaires with family members of children who are hard of hearing. Authors suggest that providing AR services through telepractice facilitates high-quality diagnostics and counseling to the same extent as that of in-person diagnostic sessions.
Credit(s): PDHs: 3.5, ASHA CEUs*: 0.35
Summary: This SIG 5 activity includes three articles from a forum aimed at sharing research conducted in clinical settings around the world. Two research articles analyzed surgical and parent-led therapy approaches for improved speech and resonance outcomes. A third tutorial described characteristics needed in an evaluation to analyze clinically obtained data for research purposes. The first research article is based in Brazil. It demonstrates positive long-term outcomes in children with hypernasality/velopharyngeal dysfunction using the Sommerlad procedure of palatal re-repair to treat residual velopharyngeal insufficiency. The reported scores were in the categories of: “hypernasality, global impression of velopharyngeal function, and/or active speech symptoms.” Overall, this study shows significant improvement in a large percentage of children, with less effect on older individuals ages 17–22 years. The second research article includes parents from a previously published twocenter study in Ireland and the United Kingdom. The aim was to analyze parents’ experiences with parent-led articulation therapy (PLAT) following in-depth training. After a detailed outline is provided regarding inclusion and teaching of the participants, four main themes are identified. These include growth of parents, undertaking PLAT, changes in children, and the future. Ultimately, the majority of parents are in favor of a parent-led therapy approach with the caveat that in-depth training and direct supervision from a speech-language pathologist is needed. The third article, a tutorial, addresses the research–clinical practice gap. A description is provided of a perceptual speech assessment protocol for cleft palate speech, to enable clinical data to be used for research purposes. The article provides detail related to determining the most appropriate standardized assessment tools as well as the best ways to collect and analyze this data. Further details related to implementation within the clinical setting are outlined. The data is easily accessible through networking between cleft teams and Sweden’s national cleft lip and palate registry, making retrospective research attainable in a clinical setting.
Credit(s): PDHs: 2.5, ASHA CEUs*: 0.25
Summary: In this SIG 2 activity, participants explore innovative articles regarding a range of topics in the assessment and treatment of motor speech disorders. The first article describes a case of anarthria in which the speech-language pathologist thoroughly described the patient’s motor speech presentation, thereby contributing to his overall neurologic diagnosis. The second article examines the effects of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a promising method of eliciting behavior change through brain stimulation, on the speech of individuals with Parkinson’s disease. The third article explores the speech and language profiles of children with apraxia of speech as their primary diagnosis, as compared to children with other concomitant diagnoses.
Credit(s): PDHs: 4.5, ASHA CEUs*: 0.45
Summary: Meta-therapy is an integral pillar of clinical practice; however, the lack of formal training in this area often makes the concept and application of meta-therapy elusive to clinicians. The goal of this SIG 3 activity is to disseminate how meta-therapy can be effectively utilized in the clinical domains of voice disorders, fluency, dysphagia, and cognitive communication and aphasia.
Credit(s): PDHs: 4.0, ASHA CEUs*: 0.4
Summary: This SIG 19 activity bundles four articles providing perspectives on a broad variety of topics in speech-language pathology. First, Bunta and Gósy discuss how speech-language pathologists and audiologists could utilize acoustic analyses in their clinical practice. They provide specific examples ranging from aphasia to speech sound disorders and various linguistic contexts to demonstrate the utility of these tools. The authors suggest acoustic analyses can be a valued supplement in clinical evaluations. Next, Diekhoff and Lulich examine speech-language pathology students’ conceptualization and description of American rhotic Sounds. They discuss the differences in descriptions of rhotic sounds by students who had experience with those sounds compared to those who did not have experience with those sounds. The role of direct instruction regarding rhotic shapes is highlighted. Then, Gurevich and Kim discuss quantifying allophonic coverage in commonly used reading passages. In summary, they suggest a need for new speech materials that could provide allophonic coverage. Finally, Jung, Jing, and Grigos investigate the accuracy and consistency of students’ perceptions/ratings of speech errors in children. They report that student clinicians’ ratings matched with expert speech-language pathologists’ ratings with training. The importance and need for listening training in speech-language pathology programs are also discussed.
Credit(s): PDHs: 0.5, ASHA CEUs*: 0.05
Summary: The article in this SIG 6 activity focuses on the audiologic variations seen among patients undergoing the same type of ototoxic drug treatment (cisplatin). Results show a large amount of audiologic outcome variability among the two patients examined, despite similar demographic factors, drug treatments, and types of cancer. Factors relating to ototoxic susceptibility are discussed, and the importance of otoxicity monitoring programs for early detection of audiologic change is highlighted.
Credit(s): PDHs: 3.5, ASHA CEUs*: 0.35
Summary: This SIG 19 activity bundles four articles providing perspectives on a broad variety of topics in speech-language pathology. First, Holt provides an overview of current and historical discussions of gender and race, challenging the reader to accept that one’s perspective is indebted to a specific belief system. Readers are to evaluate how gender and race are used to categorize people and examine whether a member of a marginalized or minoritized group affects that person’s access to or use of intervention services. Next, Cox and Koenig define speech privacy and provide a brief history and applications in the health care setting. A general perspective is outlined, including threats to speech privacy, and speakers who use an electrolarynx are used as an example to highlight specific issues clinicians may encounter. Ramanarayanan et al. discuss the use of speech as a biomarker in therapy and research. In summary, robustness of analytics—specificity, diversity, and physiological interpretability—must be further developed. Finally, Weerathunge, Tomassi, and Stepp review a number of populations with voice disorders that have been studied using altered auditory feedback. Many have hyperactive auditory feedback responses and the differing underling reasons are reviewed. Therapy considerations are also described.
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