Active clinical trials for "Communication Disorders"

This clinical trial aims to determine if a new smartphone-based speech therapy is effective and feasible for patients with post-stroke dysarthria. Participants in the intervention group will use the speech therapy app for 1 hour per day, 5 days per week, over a 4-week period. The control group will receive the same duration and frequency of traditional speech therapy as the intervention group. The study will help us understand if smartphone-based speech therapy is a viable treatment option for post-stroke dysarthria patients.

Interventional, prospective, single-centre study aimed to evaluate the impact of a video-assisted remote speech therapy consultation in relation to the complexity and specificity of the care of patients with ORL cancer. Three indications will be studied: phonation problems, swallowing problems and other problems. The study will be conducted on a population of patients with T3, T4 ORL cancer requiring speech therapy. Each patient included will have a video-assisted speech therapy consultation with a private speech therapist and an expert speech therapist. At the end of this video consultation, the patient and the private speech therapist will be asked to complete a satisfaction questionnaire. At the follow-up visit following the video-assisted consultation, the patient will have completed participation in the study.

This clinical trial aims to determine if a new smartphone-based speech therapy is effective self-treatment method for patients with post-stroke dysarthria. For this study, participants in the intervention group will use the speech therapy app for 1 hour per day, 5 days per week, over a 4-week period. The active control group will receive home-based speech therapy with the same duration and frequency as the intervention group. The study will help us understand if smartphone-based speech therapy is a viable treatment option for post-stroke dysarthria patients.

Approximately a quarter of stroke survivors are of working age, and it is well-known that disabilities caused by stroke can lead to difficulties returning to work. In addition to the economic cost, being out of the workplace due to disability has major psychosocial costs for the individual, causing reduced sense of purpose, quality of life, and standard of living. Communication problems (which can affect reading and writing, as well as producing and understanding speech) are not as visible as other stroke-related problems such as a weak arm or difficulties walking. However, they can cause major problems for returning to work because of the importance of communication across a vast range of work activities, for example as a means to engage with colleagues, to share information in order to solve problems and resolve conflicts, and as a means to ensure health and safety. There has been little research into the effects of communication problems on returning to work after a stroke, so the investigators want to explore this issue. Specifically, the investigators want to find out what helps and what hinders people with communication disorders following a stroke when they attempt to return to work; what information and support is most helpful to them; how this information and support should be given and by whom. The investigators aim to do this by interviewing people across NHS Grampian who have the experience of attempting to return to work with post-stroke communication problems. The investigators will then look at all the interviews together and find the common feelings or experiences that the participants mentioned. The findings will be written up and shared widely with professionals and with stroke survivors. The knowledge gained will help the investigators to plan a programme to help people with these problems to return to work.

Dyslexia is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. In France, dyslexia is a public health disorder. Dyslexia is a real public health problem in France, affecting 6% of the general population. However, no clinical trial of a standardized rehabilitation has shown an impact on reading fluency. In the era of intensive rehabilitation, a new protocol based on the current data from the medical literature has been designed.

One of the traditional therapies for restoring the ability of speech in aphasic patients is Melodic Intonation Therapy (MIT), in which everyday phrases are taught in a singing-like manner. The suggested mechanism for speech recovery is that because of the sharing of brain resources for language and music, the regions normally reserved for singing can be trained to help compensate the speech functions originally subserved by the damaged regions. However, this therapy has primarily been applied to speakers of non-tone languages, in which prosodic features carry a more important role than pitch features in conveying meanings. It remains unknown whether MIT will be equally applicable for speakers of tone languages, in which pitch features likely play a more important role. Another uncertainty concerns whether the efficacy of MIT can be extended to patients with expressive speech impairment due to dementia. This pilot study aims to find out the efficacy of MIT for speech-impaired dementia patients in different verbal tasks. The results of this study will provide preliminary empirical evidence to establish the utility of MIT for Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong.

Although neuroplasticity of the brain is high in childhood, some neuropsychological sequelae could persist over the long term in children with Acquired Brain Injury (ABI). Many children with TBI, show deficits in pragmatic abilities that usually persist. Pragmatic difficulties have been observed also in children with sequelae of brain neoplasms . The lack of validated assessment tools for this population is described in literature. This limit is also valid for the tests that assess pragmatic abilities. The tests that SLPs usually administer investigate only the comprehension of verbal pragmatic and, sometimes the comprehension of linguistic and emotional prosody as well. This could lead to the risk that, sometimes, some pragmatic abilities might not be included in the evaluation. Moreover, it leads to a harder definition of the treatment aims and a harder objective demonstration of treatment outcomes. For these reasons, it is important to use an assessment tool that provides information on all the pragmatic abilities, not only in input but also in output. Some Italian researchers, recently, developed a test that investigates all these areas. It is called "ABaCo", and it is based on the Cognitive Pragmatics Theory. This theory is focused on cognitive processes underlying human communication. This test is standardized on a normative group of 300 adults. It was developed with the aim of assessing pragmatic abilities in adults with brain injuries. The assessor shows short videos to the patient, and he/her has to complete or understand the interaction transmitted through different communication channels. The authors also created an adaptation of this test for children aged 5 to 8.6 years old, modifying some items. After that, they administered this adaptation of the test to 390 healthy children. In another study, the authors administered this version of the batteries to children with autism spectrum disorders and to a control group of healthy children, matched by age and sex. Considering all the studies that already exist for the application of this assessment tool in childhood and adolescence, and the perspective of a standardization for developmental ages, this study aims to investigate whether this test could be useful to detect pragmatic difficulties also in children with ABI.

Background: People with hearing, balance, and communication disorders may seek treatment at the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD). Some of these people may benefit from enrolling in the NIDCD intramural research program to receive their care. Enrolling will also allow investigators to collect participants clinical data and specimens for future research. Objective: This natural history study has 2 goals: (1) to collect data and specimens that may be used for research; and (2) to evaluate participants who may be candidates for other research studies. Eligibility: People aged 2 years or older with a hearing, balance, and communication disorder. Those at risk or who are suspected of having such a disorder are also eligible. Design: Participants will be screened. Their medical records will be reviewed. Participants will agree to have their medical data used for research. Specimens such as blood or other tissue samples may also be used for research. All data and specimens will be collected during their routine care visits. All tests done will be the normal care for each participant s condition. No tests will be done solely for research. Some of these tests may require blood or tissue samples. Some may use special tools to test hearing and balance. Some may test heart or lung function. These tests may also include different types of imaging scans. All tests will be explained. Participants may ask questions at any time. Participants may remain in this study for up to 2 years. If they need further care, they may sign a new consent. ...

Background: After a period of coma, patients with severe brain injury may present disorders of consciousness (DOC). A wide proportion of these patients also suffer from severe dysphagia. Assessment and therapy of swallowing disabilities of DOC patients are essential because dysphagia has major functional consequences and comorbidities. Dysphagia evaluation in patients with DOC is hampered by the lack of adapted tools. The first aim of the study was to develop a new tool, the SWallowing Assessment in Disorders Of Consciousness (SWADOC), and propose a validation protocol. The SWADOC tool has been developed to help therapists to apprehend components related to swallowing in patients with DOC. The second aim is to appreciate the relationship between patients' level of consciousness and SWADOC items and scores. Method/design: In this multicentric prospective cohort, 104 patients with DOC will be tested three times during two consecutive days with the SWADOC tool. Statistical analyses will focus on the reliability and validity of the SWADOC tool, especially the intra and inter-rater reliability, internal consistency, measures of dispersion and concurrent validity with the FOTT Swallowing Assessment of Saliva (FOTT-SAS). The level of consciousness will be assessed with the Simplified Evaluation of CONsciousness Disorders (SECONDs) and the Coma Recovery Scale-Revised (CRS-R) Discussion: The assessment of swallowing abilities among patients with DOC is the first necessary step towards the development of an individualized dysphagia care plan. A validated scoring tool will be essential for clinicians to better apprehend dysphagia in DOC patients and to document the evolution of their disorders.

The entry point of this project is the social background of the post-epidemic era, with teenagers and parents as the research object, aims to explore the relationship between family communication disorders and adolescent negative network use behavior in the post-epidemic era. This project intends to investigate whether there are family communication disorders and negative Internet use behaviors among 14-25 year old teenagers by issuing questionnaires (sample size: 140). In order to conclude whether there is some connection between family communication disorder and adolescent negative network use behavior.