This Phase I research will determine the efficacy of a set of hand-held prostheses in improving intelligibility during speech rehabilitation. The prostheses are designed to facilitate oral contacts required for bilabial, linguo-alveolar, and/or linguo-velar phonemes. The devices were developed to treat patients with lingual and labial deficits, including dysarthria secondary to stroke or head trauma and, following laryngectomy, insufficient air injection capacity for esophageal speech. Using the devices, 15 patients with stroke or head trauma and 5 laryngectomized patients will be treated for 20 double sessions. Criteria for selection include significant intelligibility deficits after stabilization during speech rehabilitation. Standard tests of intelligibility will be administered at intake and endpoints Dimensions of air injection capacity will be assessed by oscillographic tracings. Scoring will be blind; the significance of score changes will be tested. Significant findings will lead to a case/control study where treated cases will use the devices early in rehabilitation. The expectation is for more successful and cost-effective rehabilitationAwardee's statement of the potential commercial applications of the research:The prostheses will be marketed to the speech-language pathology profession. There are 42,000 professionals in practice, and suitable patients number 285,000. The prostheses should assist greatly in more rapid and effective speech rehabilitation of dysarthric and laryngectomized patientsNational Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NICDC)
