Speech disorders in children: Our experience in a tertiary care teaching hospital in eastern India

Abstract

Introduction: A wide variety of speech disorders exist, which impair the ability to communicate among children and adversely affect the social, emotional, and functional well-being of the child. Aim of the study: To find out speech disorders in routine paediatric otorhinolaryngology practice and the role of speech therapy for its effective management. Material and methods: This study was carried out on 58 children who presented with speech disorders at the outpatient and indoor of the department of otorhinolaryngology. Results: In this study, speech disorders like stuttering, dysglossia, dyslalia, deaf-mutism, and mouth breathing were prevalent in both sexes but encountered more in males compared to females. Stuttering was the most commonly encountered speech disorder in which speech therapy provided encouraging results. All dyslalia children underwent appropriate articulation training and improved satisfactorily, except one. All deaf-mute children (n = 9) underwent auditory training and speech and language stimulation therapy, following which four patients acquired satisfactory speech levels. All dysglossia or tongue-tie children improved satisfactorily after tongue-tie release surgery with appropriate speech therapy. Conclusions: Newer treatment modalities and coordination between otorhinolaryngologists and speech pathologists are helping to achieve correct diagnosis and treatment of speech disorders. Speech therapy is often suitably individualised according to the patient’s needs. A detailed understanding of the effectiveness of speech therapy has emerged as an acceptable modality of treatment in different speech disorders.