Alterações fonoaudiológicas em crianças de escolas públicas em Belo Horizonte

Abstract

Objective:To investigate the prevalence of oral language, orofacial motor skill and auditory processing disorders in children aged 4-10 years and verify their association with age and gender.Methods:Cross-sectional study with stratified, random sample consisting of 539 students. The evaluation consisted of three protocols: orofacial motor skill protocol, adapted from the Myofunctional Evaluation Guidelines; the Child Language Test ABFW - Phonology; and a simplified auditory processing evaluation. Descriptive and associative statistical analyses were performed using Epi Info software, release 6.04. Chi-square test was applied to compare proportion of events and analysis of variance was used to compare mean values. Significance was set at p≤0.05.Results:Of the studied subjects, 50.1% had at least one of the assessed disorders; of those, 33.6% had oral language disorder, 17.1% had orofacial motor skill impairment, and 27.3% had auditory processing disorder. There were significant associations between auditory processing skills’ impairment, oral language impairment and age, suggesting a decrease in the number of disorders with increasing age. Similarly, the variable "one or more speech, language and hearing disorders" was also associated with age.Conclusions:The prevalence of speech, language and hearing disorders in children was high, indicating the need for research and public health efforts to cope with this problem.

Prevalência de distúrbios da comunicação, deglutição e motricidade orofacial em crianças e adolescentes no momento da matrícula em um hospital oncológico

“…In this survey, prevalence of orofacial myofunctional disorder was 16.4%, similar to that reported in the study by Rabelo et al (17) , which revealed prevalence of 17.1% of orofacial motricity alterations in a sample composed of schoolchildren.…”

“…Studies on the Brazilian population have recorded varied prevalence of phonological impairment/speech disorders in children: 11.3% (17) , 9.17% (18) , 33.7% (19) . Variation in prevalence values, with respect to speech disorders of phonetic and phonological origin, is associated with the different methodologies used for diagnosis and with the differences in sample size and nomenclatures used.…”

Neuropsychomotor development and auditory skills in preschool children

“…Likewise, it was found a high incidence of alterations in the simplified evaluation of auditory processing, and this prevalence of failures is in line with studies that used the same instrument in school and preschool children 16,18,28,33 . Also in line is the observation of a greater difficulty in verbal sequential memory (MSV) and non-verbal sequential memory (MSNV), which evaluate the auditory ability of simple temporal ordering, than in the evidence of location and discrimination of the sound source 11,17,28,33 .…”

Associação entre os aspectos da avaliação clínica da língua realizada em crianças

“…Tongue height was the aspect that had the smallest number of individuals considered as altered, whereas tongue force was the aspect with the largest number of altered individuals. A previous study that addressed the clinical assessment of the tongue in healthy young adults (15) showed that force was also a variable with a large number of altered individuals (62.5% of the sample), and in another survey that investigated the prevalence of SLP disorders in children, the authors observed that 67.4% of orofacial myofunctional impairments were associated with the force of the structures evaluated (16) . A previous research (10) suggested that muscle strength interferes with the capacity of the tongue to perform sequential movements.…”

“…Considering that most speech-language therapy patients are children, it is important to observe and understand the relationships between the clinical aspects of the tongue in this population. Some authors showed that orofacial myofunctional aspects have been poorly addressed in children (16) . Thus, studies addressing these aspects could assist speech-language pathologists with performing more accurate diagnoses in the field of orofacial motricity and proposing suitable therapeutic plans.…”