Speech Pathology - Listening and Responding to Your Needs

As part of the largest and most respected speech pathology programs in the nation, speech pathology at Driscoll Children's Hospital offers a quality of services that address communication, feeding and swallowing disorders using specialists in all areas of speech pathology.

What Speech Pathology Offers – Actions that speak louder than words
Speech pathologists at the Driscoll Rehabilitation Center provide comprehensive diagnostic evaluations, consultations, family counseling and treatment programs for patients who demonstrate disorders of speech, language, voice, resonance, fluency, feeding, or swallowing due to a variety of etiologies.

Speech pathologists are able to accurately assess patients’ needs by using the most current diagnostic and treatment procedures including:

• Videofluoroscopic swallowing studies
• Computer based evaluations
• Augumentative communications systems

Highly Qualified Professionals
All professionals in speech pathology maintain the highest level of competency and proficiency. All staff members have advanced degrees in speech-language pathology, a Certificate of Clinical Competence (CCC) granted by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and a license from the Board of Speech Pathology and Audiology of the State of Texas.

In addition, staff members focus on one or more specific areas of specialties, including:

• Apraxia
• Autism
• Birth to three
• Central auditory processing
• Feeding or swallowing disorders (dysphagia)
• Fluency or stuttering disorders
• Hearing impairment/cochlear implants
• Pediatric rehabilitation for head injuries or neurological insult
• Voice/resonance

High-Intensity Therapy and Rehabilitation Solutions
Our speech pathologists are well equipped to handle the high intensity therapy and rehabilitation needs of patients at Driscoll Children’s Hospital’s Rehabilitation Center.

Level of intensity – Speech pathologists have the flexibility to provide more frequent, longer sessions for rehabilitation patients in early stages of recovery, who require high-intensity therapy.

Level of expertise – Dedicated pediatric specialists in areas such as neurological disorders are able to provide the clinical expertise and rehabilitation scheduling at an intensity best for each patient’s needs.
Interdisciplinary approach – Speech pathology treatments are designed to closely integrate with other therapies for the convenience and progress of infants, children and adolescents who require physical therapy and occupational therapy as well as speech therapy.

Who Can Benefit From Speech Pathology
Patients with the following common disorders will benefit from speech pathology:

Language disorders – Characterized by difficulty understanding language or following directions or inability to choose appropriate words and combine them correctly into sentences. This could include a patient who has lost language ability due to a neurological insult or injury.

Articulation or speech disorder – Characterized by the inability to reproduce certain speech sounds, or difficulty combining sounds correctly for words. Speech sounds can be incorrectly substituted ( tun for sun), omitted (oll for school) or distorted (shlun for sun). Articulation errors cause the speech to be distorted and hard to understand.

Fluency or stuttering disorder – Characterized by an abnormal amount of involuntary repetitions, hesitations, prolongations, blocks or disruptions in the natural rhythm or flow of speech. This is often accompanied by facial tensions.

Voice or resonance disorder – Characterized by abnormal vocal pitch, loudness or quality of resonance (nasality).

Feeding or swallowing disorder (dysphagia) – Characterized by difficulty with normal oral feeding or swallowing.

Children with high-risk histories – A child may be at risk for communication, feeding or swallowing if there is history due to the following: cleft lip, cleft palate, craniofacial abnormalities, velopharyngeal insufficiency, dental malocclusion, macroglossia, dysphangia, oral-motor dysfunction, neurologic disease or dysfunction, head trauma, brain stem injury, respiratory compromise, tracheostomy, vocal fold pathology, paralysis or paresis of a vocal fold, developmental delay, mental retardation, prematurity, autism, psychosis, hearing loss or deafness, environmental deprivation, or traumatic birth.

Early intervention of communication, feeding or swallowing disorders is critical for the best long-term outcome. Treatment is usually most effective when treated during the preschool years. Infants should be seen as early as the first few months of life if they exhibit feeding problems or do not coo or babble appropriately. In addition, high-risk infants with traumatic birth history or hearing loss should be seen to begin appropriate methods of stimulation.

A Family Centered Focus – Partners in Care
Because children rely on those closest to them for support, a family focus is at the center of all speech pathology treatments. We encourage involvement, participation in therapy sessions and support of loved ones to further aid each child’s success.