Clinical Services and Conditions Treated
Clinical Services
The speech pathology services at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center include comprehensive diagnostic evaluations, consultations, parent counseling and treatment for children with communication or feeding/swallowing disorders. These disorders may be due to a variety of causes.
Because every child’s needs are unique, our staff consists of specialists in all areas of the field. Therefore, each child is evaluated and treated by an expert in his or her specific disorder.
Following an evaluation and determination of the problem, our speech-language pathologists develop an individualized plan of care for the child. This may include a recommendation of individual therapy or group therapy. For children who do not have the physical prerequisites for speech, the child may be trained to use an augmentative communication device.
We consider parents an integral member of the treatment team. Therefore, the parents are asked to observe sessions through our closed circuit system so that they learn how to work with the child at home. Additional instructions for practice between sessions are given after each session.
Scope of Practice
The scope of practice for speech-language pathologists includes communication sciences and disorders, and upper aerodigestive disorders. The following are general categories of the common disorders that are treated by our speech-language pathologists:
- Language Disorder - Characterized by difficulty understanding language or following directions, or the inability to choose appropriate words and combine them correctly for sentences.
- Articulation (Speech) Disorder - Characterized by the inability to produce individual speech sounds, or difficulty combining sounds correctly for words that are clear. Speech sounds may be incorrectly substituted (tun for sun), omitted (ool for school) or distorted (shlun for sun).
- Fluency (Stuttering) Disorder - Characterized by an abnormal amount of involuntary repetitions, hesitations, prolongation, blocks or disruptions in the natural flow or rhythm of speech. This is often accompanied by secondary characteristics (tics and other movements).
- Voice Disorder - Characterized by abnormal vocal pitch, loudness, quality or resonance.
Feeding or Swallowing Disorder (Dysphagia) - Characterized by difficulty with normal oral feeding or swallowing.
See Scope of Practice of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association at www.asha.org
Conditions Treated
The following are common conditions treated:
Contact Us
For more information about the Division of Speech Pathology at Cincinnati Children's, contact the department at 513-636-4341 or speech@cchmc.org ..
