Risk Factors of Stuttering

Abstract

Background: Stuttering is a multifactorial and complex disorder that results from the influence of many factors, which include genetic predisposition, motor speech skills, linguistic skills and cognitive, emotional and environmental factors. A wide range of possible risk factors has been proposed in the literature, including age; gender; type and manner of onset; duration of the disfluency; type of disfluency; associated communicative and qualitative factors; physical and emotional stress; family history of stuttering; personal, familial and social reaction; and family attitudes. Objectives: The aim of this work is to study the different risk factors of stuttering in children in order to understand more about its nature, etiology and to help to decrease its incidence if possible. Patients and Methods: For this purpose; 96 patients complained from stuttering were evaluated. All data were collected after completing the assessment of patients and their parents. They were 60 (62.5%) male patients and 36 (37.5%) female patients, they showed a statistically significant difference. The age of the patients ranged from 4 to 18 years with mean ± SD of 7.75 ± 4.78 years. The age of onset of the studied patients ranged from 3 to 12 years with mean ± SD of 4.25 ± 2.31 years. Most of the patients were resident in rural areas; 64 patients (66.67%), while the urban resident was 32 patients (33.33%), they were statistically significant. Results: The present study showed the etiology of stuttering in the studied patients. The most prominent cause was the developmental stuttering (86.45%) followed by neurological stuttering (13.55%). The dysfluency distribution of the studied patients. The most prominent was the Syllables and words repetition 65 (67.7%) of patients followed by IPDs 22 (22.9%) of the patients, ± (6.25%) of the patients had prolongation and 3 (3.125%) of the patients had tonic blocks. Our study observed that family history of stuttering was found in 54 (56.25%) of patients, consanguinity was found in 30 (31.25%) of the patients, first degree relatives was found in 15 (15.625%) of the patients and second-degree relatives was present in 6 (6.25%) of the patients. Conclusion: The data of the present study concluded that the presence of stuttering or defects in speech quality and communication. Risk factors include multifactorial dynamic pathways that include: positive family history, being male (as boys are more likely than girls to keep stuttering), the onset (as children who start to stutter before age 31/2 are more likely to outgrow it than children who start to stutter at an older age), the amount of time that it's lasted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]