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Audiology in palliative care

The goal of palliation is to provide services that are centred on understanding the salient needs for the patient, maintaining quality of life and addressing any functional and supportive needs of the patient and those caring for them. The audiologist...

Improving palliative care training for speech pathologists

There has been a steady increase in the number of people with swallowing, communication and cognitive disorders requiring palliative care. They require specialised, and complex care. This study tries to find out whether speech language pathologists are adequately trained to...

Macrolinguistic assessment in early Alzheimer’s disease

Deficits in language production like word finding difficulty, and lexical-sematic impairment have been documented early in the course of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). According to the authors, the current language assessment methods used in AD patients do not account for macrolinguistic...

Do you feel me? Emotional processing post-traumatic brain injury

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) accounted for just under three million accident and emergency admissions in the US in 2013, with common causes including falls, traffic accidents and assaults. Difficulties processing and expressing affective communication is a common sequela of TBI...

Counting up discourse

Speech and language researchers and health professionals alike strive to measure communication abilities using relevant and psychometrically sound tools. Discourse measures are potential tools which reflect everyday communication more accurately than other more traditional measures. However, time has been a...

Sing it, say it, sort it: singing for Parkinson’s disease

Parkinson’s disease (PD) occurs in 1% of the population aged over 60. Changes in voice and speech are among the earliest and most prevalent symptoms of PD; reduced vocal intensity, monopitch, monoloudness, breathy and hoarse voice quality, imprecise articulation, vocal...

Parkinson’s humour: recognising social communication difficulties

Parkinson’s results in a progressive motor disease with symptoms including tremor, rigidity and bradykinesia. However, people with Parkinson’s also experience non-motor symptoms such as cognitive difficulties that can impact social communication, often due to their co-existing speech difficulties, auditory and...

Strengthen your communication: better conversations can reduce the risk of frailty

Our population is ageing and, with this, the incidence of frailty is increasing. Frailty is defined as increased vulnerability to stressors resulting in adverse outcomes. Stressors can include communication and swallowing difficulties, yet these are poorly recognised. Management of communication...

How common is dysphonia and dysphagia after cardiac surgery?

Patients undergoing cardiac surgeries, such as coronary artery bypass (CABG) and valve operations, are usually informed that there may be some risk of laryngeal complications that could result in a dysphonia or dysphagia. This may be due to factors including...