How does the speech therapist help Parkinson’s patients?
The neurological dysfunction inherent to Parkinson’s disease can affect implicit motor mechanisms, both in communication and swallowing.
Parkinson’s disease causes difficulties in all communication channels affecting body language, writing and verbal communication.
People with Parkinson’s suffer from speech and voice disorders, which tend to increase as the disease progresses. As symptoms progress, conversations with others become slower and unintelligible, so the patient tends to communicate less.
Although the affectation is determined by individual variables, it is known that approximately 60-90% of people with Parkinson’s disease present some type of speech and voice disorder, and that almost 100% may present alterations in the swallowing process throughout the course of the disease. These disorders can be treated effectively from speech therapy to try to maintain or slow the progression of these symptoms in combination with pharmacological treatment and other disciplines.
What exercises are performed in consultation?
Once the evaluation has been carried out, an intervention plan is designed with clear but not fixed objectives, aware that as the disease progresses the symptoms will vary. They are also provided with techniques to feed themselves in a safe way, thus avoiding false food routes that often cause disorders such as pneumonia, malnutrition or dehydration. The objectives will be:
- Orient the family and the patient
- To make the patient aware of the aspects of speech that hinder communication.
- Maintain and develop the preserved speech components and recover the impaired ones.
There is a great diversity of methods for the treatment of speech and voice disorders. All of them aim to treat dysarthria with the re-education of:
- Relaxation
- Posture
- Breathing
- Phonation
- Articulation
- Prosody
Do they help to delay the loss or worsening of language?
Adequate and early intervention can have a positive impact on the improvement of the different communication and swallowing disorders in Parkinson’s disease. This requires interdisciplinary work between the different professionals in charge of these patients. It is also important to use assessment tools that allow early detection of symptoms in order to treat them adequately, and thus prevent the clinical and psychosocial consequences that may result from them. These complementary interventions to medical treatment are intended to contribute to a better quality of life for those affected by Parkinson’s disease and other parkinsonisms.