Speech assessment in Down's Syndrome Children

Abstract

Background: Down syndrome (DS) is the most prevalent chromosomal disorder appearing in 1 in 800 use births. The incidence rate is higher in mothers of aging above 35-years-old and increases with further advances in maternal age. It is named after John Langdon Down, the British doctor who fully described the syndrome in 1866. Aim of the work: The aim of this study was to analyze the speech of children with Down's syndrome, in order to detect types and significance of speech disorders affecting speech intelligibility: to assist in putting the best strategy for therapy. Patients and Method: Study design: A cross sectional study. Participants: The study was conducted through 2 unfamiliar adult raters on 30 children with Down's syndrome regardless of sex. They were recruited among cases attending the Phoniatric Outpatient Clinic, Ain Shams University who fulfilled the inclusion criteria and agreed to participate in the study. Conclusion and Recommendations: Based on the obtained results, Children with Down's syndrome have specific health needs that must be identified to help their particular problems in communication. They present with deficits in receptive and expressive language. Also, speech is particularly impaired in high percentage of those children. Children with Down syndrome could not clearly deliver their speech as their peers. The findings confirmed that all the children with DS showed at least one speech disorder affecting their speech intelligibility. Recommendations: Of course, the above observations can only be considered preliminary and many more data and researches are needed by clinicians as people with Down's syndrome can now live to be much older than they could in the past and most wish to reach their maximum potential. Therefore, the clinicians should apply their skills in the differential diagnosis of speech disorders to children with DS and search for measures for the other types of speech disorders can't be assessed in our work (like motor speech disorders which were present in a high percentage in our study group), allowing better interventions to target the cause of the disorder in each individual and improve their quality of life.