The effects of intensive speech treatment on intelligibility in Parkinson's disease: A randomised controlled trial.

ABSTRACT:

Background

More than 6,000,000 individuals worldwide are diagnosed with Parkinson's disease (PD). Nearly 90% develop speech signs that may substantially impair their speech intelligibility, resulting in losses in their communication and quality of life. Benefits of intensive speech treatment have been documented for a range of speech signs. However, the critical question of whether speech is more intelligible after treatment has not been investigated in a randomised controlled trial (RCT). We hypothesised that intensive speech treatment would improve speech intelligibility in PD.

Method

Sixty-four patients with hypokinetic dysarthria secondary to PD participated in this single-centre, parallel arm, statistically-powered RCT. Reporting follows CONSORT guidelines for non-pharm

SUBMITTER: Levy ES 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7327886 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature